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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ; 



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COMPILATION 



OF 



NOTES AND MEMORANDA 



BEARING UPON THE USE OF 



HUMAN ORDURE AND HUMAN URINE 



IN 



RITES OF A RELIGIOUS OR SEMI-RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 



AMONG 



VARIOUS NATIONS 



BY = 

JOHN G. BOURKE, Captain, Third Cavalry, United States Arnny. | 

PBLLOW OP THK AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOB THE ADVANCEMENT OP SCIENCE; MEMBER OP THE ANTHBOPO- | 

LOOICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D. C. ; ATJTHOB OP THE " SNAKE DANCE OF THE = 

MOQUIS OF ABIZONA," " AN APACHE CAMPAIGN," ETC. | 



WASHINGTON, D. C: | 

1888. I 

5 
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~{^^^'^^^xl.^<M_,C...1^i^ O-/ 



3ii^- a.jju^. 



COMPILATION 



OF 



NOTES AND MEMORANDA 



BEARING UPON THE USE OF 



HUMAN ORDURE AND HUMAN URINE 



IN 



RITES OF A RELIGIOUS OR SEMI-RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 



AMONG 



VARIOUS NATIONS. 

y BY 

JOHN G. BOURKE, Captain, Third Cavalry, United States Army. 

•y TUK AMRKICAN ASSOCIATION FOB THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE; MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPO- 
1"<-,1,-VL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D. C. ; AUTHOR OF THE "SNAKE DANCE OF THE 
MOQUIS OF ARIZONA," "AN APACHE CAMPAIGN," ETC. , 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

1888. 




o^A 



^ 



> 



PREFACE. 



This compilation of notes and memoranda has been printed for distri- 
bution among scholars interested in the study of ethnology and anthro- 
pology, and not for general perusal. 

The courteous assistance received from Mr. A. R. Spofford, librarian 
of Congress, and his subordinates, Messrs. Hutcheson, Marsh, Neu- 
HAUS, Phillips, Dorset, Morrison, Key, and Chrisfield, is grate- 
fully acknowledged, as is also that extended by Hon. Wm. C. Endicott, 
Secretary of War; Brigadier General R. C. Drum, Adjutant General 
U. S. Army ; Mr. John Tweedale, chief clerk War Department ; Mr. 
David Fitz Gerald, librarian War Department ; and Mr. E. P. Thian, 
chief clerk Adjutant General's Office. 

All papers of this series which relate to the manners and usages of 
the Indians of the southwestern portion of our territory, especially those 
concerning the urine dances, phallic dances, snake dances of the Zunis, 
Mokis, and other Pueblos; the Navajos of New Mexico; the sun dance 
of the Sioux, &c., have been compiled from memoranda gathered under 
the direction of Lieutenant General P. H. Sheridan, in 1881 and 1882. 
Those referring to Apaches, &c., of Arizona; to Northern Mexico; to 
pueblo ruins and chff and cave dwellings; to Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows, 
Arapahoes, Pawnees, Shoshones, Utes, and other tribes, extending back 
to 1869, were mainly obtained while the author was serving as aide-de- 
camp upon the staff of Brigadier General George Crook, during the 
campaigns conducted by that officer against hostile tribes west of the 
Missouri, from the British line down into Mexico, and to a considerable 
extent under General Crook's direction and with his encouragement and 
assistance. 

War Department, 

Washington, D. C, December 31, 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



Page, 
Preliminary observations 7 

The urine dance of the Zunis of New Mexico 8-10 

Human urine drunk by Zunis — Human ordure and excrement of dogs eaten by Zunis — Refer- 
ence to a urine dance among the Bedouins of Arabia — The use of urine of animals among 
the Parsis. 

The Feast of Fools in Europe 10-12 

The commemorative character of religious festivals 12, 13 

Godfrey Higgins' opinion — The first Crusaders drank their own urine in Bithynia — Dove's 
dung sold for a price during one of the sieges of Samaria. 

Fray Diego Duran's account of the Mexican festivals 13, 14 

Father Geronimo Boscana's opinion of Indian dances — Commemorative dances in vogue among 
Apaches, Mojaves, Zunis, Moquis, and Sioux. 

The urine dance of the Zunis may conserve a tradition of the time when vile ali- 
ment was in use 14, 15 

Excrement used in human food 15-19 

By the Indians of Florida, Texas, California, British America, &c. 

The Mexican goddess Suchiquecal eats ordure 18, 19 

The Bacchic orgies of the Greeks 19 

Complicated with ophic rites. 

Bacchic orgies in North America 19, 20 

Descriptions by Kane, Bancroft, and Dall — Dogs eaten alive; human beings bitten — Prince 
Wied's account of such orgies among the Mandans — Such orgies possibly commemorate a 
former condition of cannibalism. 

The sacrifice of the dog a substitute for human sacrifice 20, 21 

Urine in human food . 21 

"Chinook olives" described by Paul Kane and by Herbert Spencer. 

Urine used in bread-making , 21 

By the Moquis of Arizona, according to Beadle. 

Urine used in the manufacture of salt 21 

By the Indians of Bogota, according to G6mara. 

Siberian hospitality 21, 22 

Women offered to strangers, who must drink their urine — Dulaure's account of this strange 
custom — A novel wedding custom noticed in Africa by Mungo Park ; urine of brides sprinkled 
upon the wedding guests. 

Poisonous fungi used in ur-orgies 22 

By the Indians of Cape Flattery and by the Shamans of Siberia — Accounts of Kennard, Dr. 
Kingsley, Schultze, and George Ken nan. 

A similar use of fungi quite probably existed among the, Mexicans 23-25 

Mushrooms and toadstools said to have been worshiped by the North American 

Indians 25 

A former use of fungus indicated in the myths of Ceylon and in the laws of the 

Brahmins 25, 26 

An inquiry into the Druidical use of the mistletoe 26-29 

Medicinal qualities attributed to the mistletoe, as ascertained from various authorities — Hindoo 
women seem to use it secretly — The phallic derivation of the custom of kissing under the 
mistletoe bough — Concluding remarks. 

The mistletoe festival of the Mexicans 29 

As decribcil by Diego Duran. 



6 (u>xr/':\Ts. 

Page. 
Cow dung and cow urine in religion 30, 31 

Sioux and Assinnibolnes swear upon pieces of dried buffalo dung. 

Cow dung in the religious ceremonies of the Israelites 31 

Human ordure mingled in the food of the Israelites 31, 32 

Cow dung afterward substituted. 

Offerings of dung placed upon the altars of the Assyrian Venus 32, 33 

The sacred cow's excreta a substitute for human sacrifice 33, 35 

Views of Inman and Dubois — The Hebrew prophets bedaub themselves with ordure. 

Human ordure and urine still used in India ' 35 

Excrement gods of Eg3^ptians and Romans 35, 36 

The Roman goddess Cloacina. 

Israelitish dung gods 3G-38 

The disgusting worship of Baal-Peor — Mexican gods of excrement. 

The use of the lingam in India 38, 39 

Urine and ordure as signs of mourning 39 

Urine and ordure in industries 1 39-42 

The Mexican mode of eradicating dandruff — Urine in corporal ablutions, and in dentifrices. 

Urine in ceremonial lustrations 42-43 

Ordure in smoking and divination 43 

Ordure and urine employed as medicines 44, 45 

Urine given to newly-born children in California and Fern — Excrement used as a cure for 
wounds from poisoned arrows, in Panama; as a cure for rattlesnake bite, in Lower Califor- 
nia; and as a poultice for abscesses, in Africa — Urine given in domestic medicine, in Europe; 
also, to reindeer, in Europe and Siberia. 

Occult influences ascribed to ordure and urine 46,47 

Mode of administering urine among the Hurons — Used by the French and Romans as a cure for 
fever — English women in labor drank their husbands' urine — Sprinkled upon sick children in 
Ireland — Hottentot priests sprinkle urine upon the newly-married, upon the dead, and upon 
young warriors. 

Fearful rites of the Hottentots 47 

The Gain of Cybele resembled the semi-castrated Hottentots. 

Urine used to baffle witches 47, 49 

By Romans, French, English, Scotch, Irish, Ac. — Roman matrons sprinkled their urine upon the 
the statue of the goddess Berecinthia — The Hurons of Canada wallowed in ordure, according 
to Father Le Jeune ; so did the Abyssinians — The ceremony of urination through the wed- 
ding-ring. 

Ordure used in love-philters 49-51 

In France, and by Apache and Navajo witches — The Manichean mode of making the ciirlmrisiic- 
bread — The Alblgenses used the same method. 

Burlesque survivals 51-58 

The festival of Huli — Said to be the same as our April Fool's Day — "Yellow water" sprinkled 
upon people in Rtreeta — A custom much like this noted in Portugal— The .\pache and Navajo 
feast of the Josh-kAn — The A/tec festival of blind-man's-bulf — Tli^ Pawnees made a Sioux 
calumet-bearor drink human urine as an insult — The term "excrement-eater " one of vile 
opprobrium among Mandans, according to Matthews— '• Water of amber" and "water of 
dung." 

Phallic survivals in France 63, 54 

The use of "priaj)ir wine" "holy vinegar," Ac, from the sacred phalli of Saint Foutin and 
Ouerlichon. 

Mt'diriiial effects of urine 54, 55 



URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 



The object of the present monograph is to arrange in a form for easy 
reference such allusions as have come under the author's notice bearing 
upon the use of human ordure, or urine, or articles apparently intended 
as substitutes for them, whether in rites of a clearly religious or ''medi- 
cine " type or in those which, while not pronouncedly such, have about 
them suggestions that they may be survivals of a former existence of 
urine dances or ur-orgies among tribes and peoples from whose later 
mode of life and thought they have been eliminated. 

The difficulties surrounding the elucidation of this topic will, no doubt, 
occur at once to every student of anthropology or ethnology. The rites 
and practices herein spoken of are to be found only in communities iso- 
lated from the world, and are such as even savages would shrink from 
revealing unnecessarily to strangers; while, too frequently, observers of 
intelligence have failed to improve opportunities for noting the existence 
of rites of this nature, or else, restrained by a false modesty, have clothed 
their remarks in vague and indefinite phraseology, forgetting that as a 
physician, to be skillful, must study his patients both in sickness and in 
health, so the anthropologist must study man, not alone wherein he re- 
flects the grandeur of his Maker, but likewise in his grosser and more 
animal propensities. 

Kepugnant, therefore, as the subject is under most points of view, the 
author has felt constrained to reproduce all that he has seen and read, 
hoping that in the fuller consideration which all forms of primitive re- 
ligion are now receiving this, the most brutal, possibly, of them all, may 
claim some share of examination and discussion. 

To serve as a nucleus for notes and memoranda since gleaned, the 
author has reproduced his original monograph, first published in the 
Transactions of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence, 1885, and read by title at the Ann Arbor, Michigan, meeting, in 
the same year. 



8 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

The Urine Dance of the Zunis. 

On the evening of November 17, 1881, during my stay in the village of Zuni, New 
Mexico, the Nehue-Cue, one of the secret orders of the Zunis, sent word to Mr. Frank 
H. Gushing* (whose guest I was) that they would do us the unusual honor of coming to 
our house to give us one of their characteristic dances, which. Gushing said, was unpre- 
cedented. 

The squaws of the governor's family put the long "living room" to rights, sweeping 
the floor and sprinkling it with water to lay the dust. Soon after dark the dancers 
entered ; they were twelve in number, two being boys. The center men were naked with 
the exception of black breech-clouts of archaic style. The hair was worn naturally, with 
a bunch of wild turkey feathers tied in front and one of corn-husks over each ear. White 
bands were painted across the face at eyes and mouth. Each wore a collar or neckcloth 
of black woolen stuff. Broad white bands, one inch wide, were painted around the body 
:it the navel, around the arms, the legs at mid thighs and knees. Tortoise-shell rattles 
hung from the right knee. Blue woolen footless leggins were worn with low-cut mocca- 
sins, and in the right hand each waved a wand made of an ear of corn,, trimmed with the 
plumage of the wild turkey and macaw. The others were arrayed in old cast-off Ameri- 
can Army clothing, and all wore white cotton night-caps, with corn-husks twisted into the 
hair at top of head and ears. Several wore, in addition to the tortoise-shell rattles, strings 
of brass sleigh-bells at knees. One was more grotesquely attired than the rest in a long 
India-rubber gossamer "overall " and a pair of goggles, painted white, over his eyes. His 
general "get-up" was a spirited take-off upon a Mexican priest. Another was a very 
good counterfeit of a young woman. 

To the accompaniment of an oblong drum and of the rattles and bells spoken of they 
shuffled into the long room, crammed with spectators of both sexes and of all sizes and 
ages. Their song was apparently a ludicrous reference to everything and everybody in 
sight, Gushing, MindelefF, and myself receiving special attention, to the uncontrolled 
merriment of the red-skinned listeners. I had taken my station at one side of the room, 
seated upon the banquette, and having in front of me a rude bench or table, upon which 
was a small coal-oil lamp. I suppose that in the halo diffused by the feeble light and in 
my "stained-glass attitude" I must have borne some resemblance to the pictures of saints 
hanging upon the walls of old Mexican churches ; to such a fancied resemblance I at least 
attribute the performance which followed. 

The dancers suddenly wheeled into line, threw themselves on their knees before my 
table, and with extravagant beatings of breast began an outlandish but faithful mockery of 
a Mexican Gatholic congregation at vespers. One bawled out a parody upon the Pater- 
noster, another mumbled along in the manner of an old man reciting the rosary, while 
the fellow with the India-rubber coat jumped up and begt^n a passionate exhortation or 
sermon, which for mimetic fidelity was incomparable. This kept the audience laughing 
with sore sides for some moments, until at a signal from the leader the dancers suddenly 
countermarched out of the room, in single file, as they had entered. 

An interlude followed of ten minutes, during which the dusty floor was sprinkled by 
men who spat water forcibly from their mouths. The Nehue-Cue re-entered ; this time 
two of their number were stark naked. Their singing was very peculiar and sounded 
like H chorus of chimney-sweeps, and their dance Ijecame a stiff-legged jump, with heels 
ke[)t twelve inches apart. Afler they had ambled around the room two or three times, 
Gushing announced in the Zuni language that a "feast" was ready for them, at which 

* Mr. Cushing's reputation iia an ethnologist is now so firmly established in two continents that 
no reftTcnce to his self-sacrificing and invaluable labors in the cause of science seems to be neces- 
sary. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 9 

they loudly roared their approbation and advanced to strike hands with the munificent 
"Americanos," addressing us in a funny gibberish of broken Spanish, English, and Zuni. 
They then squatted upon the ground and consumed with zest large ''ollas" full of tea, 
and dishes of hard tack and sugar. As they were about finishing this a squaw entered, 
carrying an "olla" of urine, of which the filthy brutes drank heartily. 

I refused to believe the evidence of my senses, and asked Gushing if that were really 
human urine. "Why, certainly," replied he, "and here comes more of it." This time, 
it was a large tin pailful, not less than two gallons. I was standing by the squaw as she 
offered this strange and abominable refreshment. She made a motion with her hand to 
indicate to me that it was urine, and one of the old men repeated the Spanish word inear 
(to urinate), while my sense of smell demonstrated the truth of their statements. 

The dancers swallowed great draughts, smacked their lips, and, amid the roaring mer- 
riment of the spectators, remarked that it was very, very good. The clowns were now 
upon their mettle, each trying to surpass his neighbors in feats of nastiness. One swal- 
lowed a fragment of corn-husk, saying he thought it very good and better than bread ; 
his vis-d-vis attempted to chew and gulp down a piece of filthy rag. Another expressed 
regret that the dance had not been held out of doors, in one of the plazas ; there they 
could show what they could do. There they always made it a point of honor to eat the 
excrement of men and dogs. 

For my own part I felt satisfied with the omission, particularly as the room, stuffed 
with one hundred Zunis, had become so foul and filthy as to be almost unbearable. The 
dance, as good luck would have it, did not last many minutes, and we soon had a chance 
to run into the refreshing night air. 

To this outline description of a disgusting rite I have little to add. The Zunis, in 
explanation, stated that the Nehue-Cue were a Medicine Order which held these dances 
from time to time to inure the stomachs of members to any kind of food, no matter 
how revolting. This statement may seem plausible enough when we understand that 
religion and medicine among primitive races are almost always one and the same thing, 
or, at least, so closely intertwined that it is a matter of difficulty to decide where one 
begins and the other ends. 

Religion in its dramatic ceremonial preserves, to some extent, the history of the par- 
ticular race in which it dwells. Among nations of high development, miracles, morali- 
ties, and passion plays have taught, down to our own day, in object lessons, the sacred 
history in which the spectators believed. Some analogous purpose may have been held 
in view by the first organizers of the urine dance. In their early history, the Zunis and 
other Pueblos suffered from constant warfare with savage antagonists and with each other. 
From the position of their villages, long sieges must of necessity have been sustained, in 
which sieges famine and disease, no doubt, were the allies counted upon by the investing 
forces. We may have in this abominable dance a tradition of the extremity to which the 
Zunis of the long ago were reduced at some unknown period. A similar catastrophe in 
the history of the Jews is intimated in II Kings, xviii, 27 ; and again in Isaiah, xxxvi, 
12 : "But Rab-shakeh said unto them : hath my master sent me to thy master, and to 
thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that 
they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you ?' ' In the course of my 
studies I came across a reference to a very similar dance, occurring among one of the 
fanatical sects of the Arabian Bedouins, but the journal in which it was recorded, the 
London Lancet, I*think, was unfortunately mislaid. 

As illustrative of the tenacity with which such vile ceremonial, once adopted by a sect, 
will adhere to it and become ingrafted upon its life, long after the motives which have 
suggested or commended it have vanished in oblivion, let me quote a few lines from Max 
Miiller's "Chips from a German Workshop," "Essay upon the Parsees," pp. 163, 164, 



10 . URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

Scribner's edition, 1869: "The nirang is the urine of a cow, ox, or she-goat, and the 
rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a Parsee does after getting out 
of bed. Either before applying the nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains 
on the hands after being applied, he should not touch anything directly with his hands ; 
but, in order to wash out the Nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his 
hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot through the intervention of a 
piece of cloth, such as a handkerchief, or his sudra, i. e., his blouse. He first pours 
water on his hand, then takes the pot in that hand and washes his other hand, face, and 
feet." (Quoting from Dadahhai-Nadrosi' s Description of the Parsees.) 

Continuing, Max Muller says : "Strange as this process of purification may appear, it 
becomes perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childljirth, have not 
only to undergo this sacred ablution, but actually to drink a little of the nirang, and 
that the same rite is imposed on children at the time of their investiture with the Sudra 
and Koshti, the badges of the Zoroastrian faith." 

THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN EUROPE. 

Closely corresponding to this urine dance of tlie Zunis was the Feast 
of Fools, in Continental Europe, the description of which, here given, is 
quoted from Dulaure: 

La grand' messe commen^ait alors ; tous les ecclesiastiques y assistaient, le visage bar- 
bouille de noir, ou couvert d'un masque hideux ou ridicule. Pendant la celebration, les 
uns,vetus en baladins ou en femmes, dansaient au milieu du choeur et y chantaient des 
chansons bouflfbnes ou obscenes. Les autres venaient manger sur I'autel des saucisses et 
des boudins, jouer aux cartes ou aux dez, devant le pretre celebrant, I'encensaient avec 
un encensoir, ou brulaient de vieilles savates, et lui en faisaient respirer la fum6e. 

Apres la messe, nouveaux actes d' extravagance et d'impi6t6. Les pretres, confondus 
avec les habitans des deux sexes, couraient, dansaient dans I'eglise, s'excitaient a toutes 
les folies, a toutes les actions licencieuses que leur inspirait une imagination effr^n^e. 
Plus de honte, plus de pudeur ; aucune digue n'arretait le d^bordement de la folic et des 
passions. ^ * * * * 

Au milieu du tumulte, des blasphemes et des chants dissolus, on voyait les uns se 
d6pouiller entierement de leurs habits, d'autres se livrer aux actes du plus honteux 
libertinage. 

* ^ * Les acteurs, montes sur des tombereaux pleins d'ordures, s'amusaient a en 
Jeter a la populace qui les entouraient. * * * Ces scenes ^taient toujours accom- 
pagnees de chansons ordurieres et impies. — (Dulaure, "Des Divinit^s Generatrices," 
chap. XV, p. 315, et seq., Paris, 1825.) 

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FEAST OF FOOLS AND THE URINE DANCE. 

In the above description may be seen that the principal actors (taking 
possession of the church during high mass) had their faces daubed and 
painted, or masked in a harlequin manner ; that they were dressed a.s 
clowns or as women ; that they ate upon the altar itself sausages and 
blood-puddings. Now the word blood-pudding, in French, is houdin — 
but houdin also meant exerement.'^ Add to this the fei\ture that these 

^See in Dictionary of French and English Language, by Ferdinand E. A. Gasc, Loudon, Bell and 
Daldy, York street. Covent Garden. 1871^. 

Littrr?, whose work appeared in 1803, gives us one of his definitions, "anything that is shaped 
like a sausage." 

Bescherelle, Spiers and Surenne and Boyer, do not give Gaso's definition. 



URINE DANCES AND UE- ORGIES. H 

clowns, after leaving the church, took their stand in dung-carts (tomber- 
eaux), and threw ordure upon the bystanders ; and finally that some of 
these actors appeared perfectly naked (^^ on yoyait les uns se d6pouiller 
entidrement de leurs habits "), and it must be admitted that there is 
certainly a wonderful concatenation of resemblances between these filthy 
and inexplicable rites on different sides of a great ocean. 

THE FEAST OF FOOLS TRACED BACK TO MOST ANCIENT TIMES. 

Dulaure makes no attempt to trace the origin of these ceremonies in 
France; he contents himself with saying, "ces ceremonies * * * 
ont subsist6 pendant douze ou quinze siecles," or, in other words, that 
they were of Pagan origin. In twelve or fifteen hundred years the 
rite might well have been sublimed from the eating of pure excre- 
ment, as among the Zunis, to the consumption of the '^ boudin," the 
excrement symbol.* Conceding for the moment that this suspicion is 
correct, we have a proof of the antiquity of the urine dance among the 
Zunis. So great is the resemblance between the Zuni rite and that just 
described by Dulaure, that we should have reason for believing that the 
new country borrowed from the old some of the features transmitted to 
the present day, and were there not evidence of a wider distribution 
of this observance, it might be assumed that the Catholic missionaries 
(who worked among the Zunis from 1580, or thereabout, and excepting 
during intervals of revolt remained on duty in Zuni down to the period 
of American occupation) found the obscene and disgusting orgie in full 
vigor, and realizing the danger, by unwise precipitancy, of destroying 
all hopes of winning over this people, shrewdly concluded to tacitly accept 
the religious abnormality and to engraft upon it the plant flourishing 
so bravely in the vicinity of their European homes. 

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE FEAST OF FOOLS. 

In France, the Feast of Fools disappeared only with the French Eevo- 
lution ; in other parts of Continental Europe it began to wane about the 
time of the Eeformation. In England, " the abbot of unreason," whose 
pranks are outlined by Sir Walter Scott, in his novel, " The Abbot," the 
miracle plays which had once served a good purpose in teaching script- 
tural lessons to an illiterate peasantry, and the " moralities " of same 
general purport, faded away under the stern antagonism of the Puritan 

* And very probably a phallic symbol also. ' 



12 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

iconoclast. The Feast of Fools, as such, was abolished by Henry VIII 
A. D. 1541. (See '' The English Keformation," Francis Charles Mas- 
singberd, London, 1857, p. 125.*) Picart's account of the Feast of 
Fools is similar to that given by Dulaure. He says that it took place 
in the church, at Christmas tide, and was .borrowed from the Roman 
Saturnalia ; was never approved of by the Christian church, as a body, 
but fought against from the earliest times : 

Les uns 6toient masques ou avec des visages barbouilles qui faisoient peur ou qui faisoient 
rire ; les autres en habits de femmes ou de pantomimes, tels que sont les ministres du 
theatre. 

lis dansoient dans le choeur, en entrant, et chantoient, des chansons obscenes. Les 
Diacres et les sou-diacres prenoient plaisir a mager des boudins et des saucisses sur I'autel, 
au nez du pretre celebrant ; ils jouoient a des seux aux cartes et aux d6s ; ils mettoient dans 
I'encensoir quelques morceaux de vieilles savates pour lui faire respirer une mauvaise 
odeur. 

Apres la messe, chacun couroit, sautoit et dansoit par T^glise avec tant d' impudence, 
que quelques uns n'avoietit pas honte de se porter a toutes sortes d'ind^cences et de se 
depouiller entierement ; ensuite, ils se faisoient trainer par les rues dans des tombereaux 
pleins d'ordures, d'ou ils prenoient plaisir d'en jeter a la populace qui s'assembloit autour 
d'eux. 

Us s'arretoient et faisoient de leurs corps des mouvements et des postures lascives qu'ils 
accompagnoient de paroles impudiques. 

Les plus impudiques d'entre les seculiers se meloient parmi le clerge, pour faire aussi 
quelques personnages de Foux en habits ecclesiastiques de Moines et de Religieuses. — 
(Picart, "Coutumes et Ceremonies religieuses de toutes les Nations du Monde,'' Am- 
sterdam, Holland, 1729, vol. ix, pp. 5, 6.) 

Diderot and d' Alembert use almost the same terms ; the officiating 
clergy were clad ''les uns comme des bouffons, les autres en habits de 
femmes ou masques d'une fayon monstrueuse * * * iJg mangeaient et 
jonaient aux des sur I'autel ^ cote du pretre qui celebroit la messe. lis 
mettoient des ordures dans les encensoirs." They say that the details 
would not bear repetition. This feast prevailed generally in Continental 
Europe from Christmas to Epiphany, and in England, especially in 
York. (Diderot and d' Alembert, Encyclopaedia, '' Fete des Fous," Ge- 
neva, Switzerland, 1779.) 

THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS. 

The opinion expressed above concerning the commemorative character 
of religious festivals echoes that which Godfrey Higgins enunciated sev- 

*Faber advances the opinion that the " mummers " or clowns who figured in the pastimes of the 
abbot of unreason, ttc. bear a strong resemblance to the nninial-hcaded Egyptian priests in the 
sacred dances represented on the Bombine or Isiac table. (See Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," Lon- 
don, 1816. vol. 2, p. 479.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 13 

eral generations ago. The learned author of Anacalypsis says that fes- 
tivals, '^ accompanied with dancing and music, * * were established to 
keep in recollection victories or other important events." (Higgins' 
Anacalypsis, London, 1810, vol. 2, p. 424.) He argues the subject at 
some length on pages 424-426, but the above is sufficient for the present 
purpose. 

In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest of their habits and 
customs. — (Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. 1, p. 15.) 

Applying the above remark to the Zuni dance, it may be interpreted 
as a dramatic pictograph of some half-forgotten episode in tribal history. 
To strengthen this view by example, let us recall the fact that the Army 
of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit* was so closely beleagured by the 
Moslems in Nicomedia in Bithynia that they were compelled to drink 
their own urine, f We read the narrative set out in cold type. The 
Zunis would have transmitted a record of the eVfentby a dramatic rep- 
resentation which time would incrust with all the veneration that religion 
could impart. 

Dancing was originally merely religious, intended to assist the memory in retaining the 
sacred learning which originated previous to the invention of letters. 

Indeed, I believe that there were no part of the rites and ceremonies of antiquity which 
were not adopted with a view to keep in recollection the ancient learning before letters 
were known. — (Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. 2. p. 179.) 

FRAY DIEaO DURAN'S ACCOUNT OF THE MEXICAN FESTIVALS. 

All that Higgins believed was believed and asserted by the Dominican 
missionary Diego Duran. Duran complains bitterly that the unwise de- 
struction of the ancient Mexican pictographs and all that explained the 
religion of the natives left the missionaries in ignorance as to what was 
religion and what was not. The Indians, taking advantage of this, mocked 
and ridiculed the dogmas and ceremonies of the new creed in the very face 
of its expounders, who still lacked a complete mastery of the language 
of the conquered. The Indians never could be induced to admit that 
they still adhered to their old superstitions, or that they were boldly 
indulging in their religious observances ; many times, says the shrewd 
old chronicler, it would appear that they were merely indulging in some 
pleasant pastime, while they were really engaged in idolatry ; or that 

* Purchas, Pilgrims, lib. 8, chap. 1, p. 1191. London, 1622. Neither Gibbon nor Michaud expresses 
this fact so clearly, but each speaks of the terrible sufferings which decimated the undisciplined 
hordes of Peter and Walter the Penniless, and reduced the survivors to cannibalism. 

t In one of the sieges of Samaria it is recorded that " the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung sold 
for five pieces of silver." (2 Kings, vi : 25.) 



14 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

they were playing games, when truly they were casting lots for future 
events before the priest's eyes ; or that they were subjecting themselves 
to penitential discipline, when they were sacrificing to their gods. This 
remark applied to all that they did. In dances, in baths, in markets, 
in singing their songs, in their dramas (the word is '^ comedia," a comedy, 
but a note in the margin of the manuscript says that probably this ought 
to be " co7nida," food, or dinner, or feast), in sowing, in reaping, in putting 
away the harvest in their granaries, even in tilling the ground, in build- 
ing their houses, in their funerals, in their burials, in marriages, in the 
birth of children, into everything they did entered idolatry and super- 
stition. 

Parece muchas veces pensar que estan haciendo placer y estan idolatrando ; y pensar 
que estan jugando y estan echando suertes de los sucesos delante de nnestros ojos y no los 
entendemos y pensamos que se disciplinan y estanse sacrificando. 

Y asi erraron mucho los qU^.con bueno celo (pero no con mucha prudencia), quema- 
ron y destruyeron al principio todas las pinturas de antiguallas que tenian ; pues, nos 
dejaron tan sin luz que delante de nuestros ojos idolatran y no los entendemos. 

En los mitotes, en los banos, en los mercados, y en los cantares que cantan lamen- 
tando sus Dioses y sus Senores Antiguos, en las comedias, en los banquetes, y en el diferen- 
ciar en el de ellas, en todo se halla supersticion 6 idolatria ; en el sembrar, en el coger, 
en el encerrar en los troges, hasta en el labrarla tierra y edifiear las casas ; pues en los mort- 
uorios y entierros, y en los casamientos y en los nacimientos de los niSos, especialmente 
si era hijo de algun Senor, eran estranas las ceremonias que se le hacian ; y donde todo 
se perfeccionaba era en la celebracion de las fiestas ; finalmente, en todo mezclaban super- 
sticion e idolatria ; hasta en irse a bafiarse al rio los viejos, puesto escriipulo a la repub- 
lica sino fuese habiendo precedido tales y tales ceremonias ; todo lo cual nos es encubierto 
por el gran secreto que tienen. — (Diego Duran, lib. 2, concluding remarks.) 

Fray Diego Duran, a Fray Predicador of the Dominican Order, says, 
at the end of his second volume, that it was finished in 1581. 

The very same views were held by Father Geronimo Boscana, a Fran- 
ciscan, who ministered for seventeen years to the Indians of California. 
Every act of an Indian's life was guided by religion. (See ''Chinigchinich," 
included in A. A. Robinson's "California," New York, 1850.) 

The Apaches have dances in which the prehistoric condition of the tribe 
is thus represented; so have the Mojaves and the Zunis ; while in the 
snake dance of the Moquis and the sun dance of the Sioux the same 
faithful adherence to traditional costume and manners is apparent. 

THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUNIS MAY CONSERVE A TRADITION OF THE 
TIME WHEN VILE ALIMENT WAS IN USE. 

The Zuni urine dance may therefore not improperly be considered, 
among other points of view, under that wliich suggests a commemora- 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 15 

tion of the earliest life of this people, when vile aliment of every kind 
may have been in use through necessity. 

An examination of evidence will show that foods now justly regarded 
as noxious were once not unknown to nations of even greater develop- 
ment than any as yet attained by the Rio Grrande Pueblos. Necessity 
was not always the inciting motive; frequently religious frenzy was 
responsible for orgies of which only vague accounts and still vaguer ex- 
planations have come down to us. 

EXCREMENT USED IN HUMAN FOOD. 

The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas refer 
to the use of such aliment. Cabe9a de Vaca, one of the survivors of the 
ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, was a prisoner among various 
tribes for many years, and finally, accompanied by three comrades as 
wretched as himself, succeeded in traversing the continent, coming out 
at Culiacan, on the Pacific coast, in 1536. 

His narrative says that the ^' Floridians " for food dug roots, and that 
they ate spiders, ant's eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, 
wood, the dung of deer, and many other things."* The same account, 
given in Purchas' Pilgrims (vol. 4, lib. 8, cap. 1, sec. 2, p. 1512), ex- 
presses it that ^Hhey also eat earth, wood, and whatever they can get; 
the dung of wild beasts." These remarks may be understood as apply- 
ing to all tribes seen by this early explorer east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. 

Gomara identifies this loathsome diet with a particular tribe, the 
" Yaguaces " of Florida. '^ They eat spiders, ants, worms,- lizards of two 
kinds, snakes, wood, earth, and ordure of all kinds of wild animals. "f 

The California Indians were still viler. The German Jesuit, Father 
Jacob Baegert, speaking of the Lower Californians (among whom he 
resided continuously from 1748 to 1765), says : 

They eat the seeds of the pitahaya [giant cactus] which have passed off undigested 
from their own stomachs ; they gather their own excrement, separate the seeds from 
it, roast, grind, and eat them, making merry over the loathsome meal. 

*Ils mangent des araignees, des oeufs de fourmis, des vers, des lizards, des salamandres, des cou- 
leuvres, de la terre, du bois, de la fiente de cerfs et bien d'autres choses. — (Alvar Nunez Cabe^a de 
Vaca, in Ternaux, vol 7, p. 144.) 

tComen aranas, hormigas, gusanos, salamanquesas, lagartijas, culebras, palos, tierra y caga- 
jones y cagurratas. (Gdmara "Historia de las Indias," p. 182.) He derives his information from 
the narrative of Vaca. The word " cagajon" means horse dung, the dung of mules and asses ; 
"cagarruta" the dung of sheep, goats, and mice. 



1(3 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

And again : 

In the mission of St. Ignatius * * * there are persons who will attach a piece of 
meat to a string and swallow it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession for the 
sake of protracting the enjoyment of its taste. — (Translation of Dr. Charles F. Rau, in 
Annual Report Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 363.) 

A similar use of meat tied to a string is understood to have once 
been practiced by European sailors for the purpose of teasing green com- 
rades suffering from the agonies of sea-sickness. 

Castaneda alludes to the Californians as a race of naked savages who 
ate their own excrement.* 

The same information is to found in Clavigero (''Historia de la Baja 
California," Mexico, 1852, p. 24), and in H. H. Bancroft's '' Native Races 
of the Pacific Slope," vol. 1, p. 561, both of whom derive from Father 
Baegert. Orozco y Berra also has the story, but he adds that oftentimes 
numbers of the Californians would meet and pass the delicious titbit from 
mouth to mouth. t 

The Indians of British North America, according to Harmon, " boil the 
buffalo paunch, with much of its dung adhering to it " — a filthy mode 
of cooking, which in itself would mean little since it can be paralleled in 
almost all tribes; but, in another paragraph, the same author says, 
'' many consider a broth made by means of the dung of the cariboo and 
the hare to be a dainty dish." (Harmon's Journal, &c., Andover, 1820, 
p. 3244) 

The Abb6 Domenech asserts the same of the bands near Lake Superior : 

In boiling their wild rice to eat they mix it with the excrement of rabbit — a delicacy 
appreciated by the epicures among them. — (Domenech, "Deserts," vol. 2, p. 311.) 

Of the negroes of Guinea, an old authority relates that they '' ate 
filthy, stinking elephant's and buffalo's flesh, wherein there is a thousand 
maggots, and many times stinks like carrion. * * :*= They eat 

*Peupl6 de sauvagea qui vont tons nus et qui mangent leurs propres ordures. — (Castaneda, 
Ternaux, vol. 9. p. 156.) 

Castjini'da de Nagera aceompjinied the expedition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado which 
entered Arizona, New Mexico, and the buffalo country in 1540-'42. Part of this expedition, under 
Don Garcia Lope de Cardena, went down the Colorado River, which separates California from 
Arizona, while another detachment, under Melchior Diaz, struck the river closer to its mouth 
and crossed into California. 

t Algumns veces se juntan varios Indios y d la redonda va corriendo el bocndo de uno en otro.— 
(Orozco y Berra. "Geografia de las lenguas de Mejioo," Mexico, 1854, p. 359.) 

t Harmon's notes are of special interest at this point, because he is speaking of the Ta-cully or 
Carriers, who belong to the same Tinneh stock as the Apaches and Navajocs of Arizona and New 
Mexico. Lipans of Texas. Umpcjuas of Washington Territory, Hoopnhs of California, and Slow- 
cuBH of tlu! head -waters of the Columbia River. 



URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 17 

raw dogge guts, and never seethe nor roast them."* And another says 
that the Mossagueyes make themselves ''a pottage with milk and fresh 
dung of kine, which, mixed together and heat at the fire, they drinke 
saying it makes them strong." (Purchas, lib. 9, cap. 12, sec. 4, p. 1555.) 
The Peruvians ate their meat and fish raw, but nothing further is said 
by G6mara.t 

HUMAN ORDURE EATEN BY EAST INDIAN FANATICS. 

Speaking of the remnants of the Hindu sect of the Aghozis, an Eng- 
lish writer observes : 

In proof of their indifference to worldly objects, they eat and drink whatever is given 
them, even ordure and carrion. They smear their bodies also with excrement, and carry 
it about with them in a wooden cup, or skull, either to swallow it, if by so doing they can get 
a few pice, or to throw it upon the persons or into the houses of those who refuse to com- 
ply with their demands. — (" Religious Sects of the Hindus," in Asiatic Researches, vol, 
17, p. 205, Calcutta, India, 1832.) 

Another writer confirms the above. The Abb6 Dubois says that the 
Gurus or Indian priests sometimes, as a mark of favor, present to their 
disciples " the water in which they had washed their feet, which is pre- 
served and sometimes drunk by those who receive it." (Dubois, '^People 
of India," London, 1817, p. 64.) This practice, he tells us, is general 
among the sectaries of Siva, and is not uncommon with many of the Vish- 
nuites in regard to their vashtuma. '^ Neither is it the most disgusting 
of the practices that prevail in that sect of fanatics, as they are under the 
reproach of eating, as a hallowed morsel, the very ordure that proceeds 
from their Gurus, and swallowing the water with which they have rinsed 
their mouths or washed their faces, with many other practices equally 
revolting to nature." {Idem, p. 71. J) 

That the same disgusting veneration was accorded the per.son of the 

Grand Lama, of Thibet, was once generally believed. Maltebrun asserts 

it in positive terms : 

It is a certain fact that the refuse excreted from his body is collected with sacred solici- 
tude, to be employed as amulets and infallible antidotes to disease. 

*De Bry, Ind. Orient, in Purchas' Pilgrims, vol. 2, p. 935. 

t Comen crudo la came, y el peseado.— (Gdmara, Hist, de las Indias, p. 234.) 

J Again, on p. 331, Dubois alludes to the "Gynmosophists, or naked Samyasis of India, * * * 
eating human excrement, without showing the slightest symptom of disgust." 

As bearing not unremotely upon this point, the author wishes to say, that in his personal notes 
and memoranda can be found references to one of the medicine-men of the Sioux, who assured his 
admirers that everything about him was " medicine," even his excrement, which could be trans- 
muted into copper cartridges. 



18 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

And, quoting from Pallas, book 1, p. 212, he adds : 

II est hors de doute que le eontenu de sa chaise perc6e est d6votement recueilli ; les 
parties solides sont distributes corame des amulettes qu'on porte au cou ; le liquide est 
pris int6rieurement comme une medicine infallible. — (Maltebrun, Universal Geography, 
article "Thibet," vol. 2, lib. 45, American edition, Philadelphia, 1832.) 

The Abb6 Hue denies this assertion : 

The Tal6 Lama is venerated by the Thibetans and the Mongols like a divinity. The 
influence he exercises over the Buddhist population is truly astonishing ; but still it is 
going too far to say that his excrements are carefully collected and made into amulets, 
vs^hich devotees inclose in pouches and carry around their necks. — (Hue, Travels in 
Tartary, Thibet, and China, London, 1849, vol. 2, p. 198.) 

HUC AND DUBOIS COMPARED. 

Hue was a keen and observing traveler ; he wais well acquainted with 
the languages and customs of the Mongolians ; his tour into Thibet was 
replete with incident, and his narrative never flags in interest. Still, in 
Thibet, he was only a traveler ; the upper classes of the Buddhist priest- 
hood looked upon him with suspicion. The lower orders of priesthood 
and people did seem to consider him as a Lama from the far East, but 
he did not succeed in gaining the confidence of the Thibetans to the 
extent possessed by Dubois among the Brahminical sects. 'The history 
of the latter author is a peculiar one : A French priest, driven from his 
native land by the excesses of the revolution, he took refuge in India, 
devoting himself for nearly twenty years to missionary labor among 
the people, with whom he . became so thoroughly identified that when 
his notes appeared they were published at the expense of the British 
East India Company, and distributed among its ofiicials as a text-book. 

THE MEXICAN GODDESS SUCHIQUECAL EATS ORDURE. 

The Mexicans had a goddess, of whom we read the following : 

Father Fabreya says, in his commentary on the Codex Borgianus, that the mother of 
the human race is there represented in a state of humiliation, eating cuitlatl {kopros, Greek). 
The vessel in the left hand of Suchiquecal contains ''^mierda,^'' according to the interpreter 
of these paintings. — (See note to p. 120, Kingsborough's " Mexican Antiquities," vol. 6.) 

The Spanish mierda, like the Greek kopros, means ordure. 

Deities, created in the ignorance or superstitious fears of devotees, are 
essentially man-like in their attributes ; where they are depicted as cruel 
and sanguinary toward their enemies, the nation adoring them, no mat- 
ter how pacific to-day, was once cruel and sanguinary likewise. Anthro- 
pophagous gods are worshiped only by the descendants of cannibals, 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 19 

and excrement-eaters only by the progeny of those who were not un- 
acquainted with human ordure as an article of food. 

THE BACCHIC OKGIES OF THE GREEKS. 

The Bacchic orgies of the Greeks, while not strictly assimilated to the 
ur-orgies, can scarcely be overlooked in this connection. 
Montfaucon describes the Omophagi of the Greeks : 

Les Omophagies 6toient une fete des Grecs qui passoient la fureur Baccliique ; ils 
s'entortilloient, dit Arnobe, de serpens et mangeoient des entrailles de Cabri crues, dont 
ils avaient la bouche toute ensanglantee ; cela est exprim^e par le nom Omophage. 
Nous avons vu quelquefois des hommes tous entortillez de serpens et particulierement 
dans Mithras. — (Montfaucon, '' L'Antiquite expliqu6e," tome 2, book 4, p. 22.) 

The references to serpent-worship are curious, in view of the fact that 
such ophic rites still are celebrated among the Mokis, the next-door 
neighbors of the Zunis, and once existed among the Zunis themselves. 
The allusion to Mithras would seem to imply that these orgies must have 
been known to the Persians as well as the Greeks. 

Bryant, speaking of the Greek orgies, uses this language : 

Both in the orgies of Bacchus and in the rites of Ceres, as well as of other deities, 
one part of the mysteries consisted in a ceremony {omophagia), at which time they ate the 
flesh quite crude with the blood. In Crete, at the Dionisiaca, they used to tear the flesh 
with their teeth from the animal when alive. — (Bryant, ''Mythology," London, 1775, 
vol. 2, p. 12.) 

And again, on p. 13 : 

The Maenules and Bacchae used to devour the raw limbs of animals which they had 
cut or torn asunder. * * In the island of Chios it was a religious custom to tear a man 
limb from limb, by way of sacrifice to Dionysius. From all which we may learn one 
sad truth, that there is scarce anything so impious ,and unnatural as not, at times, to have 
prevailed. — {Idem. ) 

Faber tells us that — 

The Cretans had an annual festival * * * in their frenzy they tore a living bull 
with their teeth, and brandished serpents in their hands. — (Faber, "Pagan Idolatry," 
London. 1816, vol. 2, p. 265.) 

BACCHIC ORGIES IN NORTH AMERICA. 

These orgies were duplicated among many of the tribes of North 
America. Paul Kane describes the inauguration of Clea-clach, a Clallum 
chief (Northwest coast of British America); "he seized a small dog and 
began devouring it alive." He also bit pieces from the shoulders of the 
male by-standers. (See ''Artist's Wanderings in North America," Lon- 
don, 1859, p. 212 ; also, the same thing quoted by Herbert Spencer, in 
*' Descriptive Sociology.") 



20 URINE DANCES AND UB-OBGIES. 

Bancroft describes like orgies among the Chimsyans, of British North 
America. (See in ^'Native Races of the Pacific Slope," vol. 1, p. 171.) 
While the Nootkas medicine-men are said to have an orgie in which 
''live dogs and dead human bodies are seized and torn by their teeth ; 
but, at least in later times, they seem not to attack the living, and their 
performances are somewhat less horrible and bloody than the wild orgies 
of the northern tribes." (Idem, vol. 1, p. 202.) 

The Haidahs, of the same coast, indulge in an orgie in which the per- 
former " snatches up the first dog he can find, kills him, and tearing 
pieces of his flesh, eats them." (Dall, quoting Dawson, in " Masks and 
Labrets," Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 
D. C, 1886.) 

In describing the six secret soldier societies or bands of the Mandans, 
Maximilian, of Wied, calls attention to the three leaders of one band, 
who were called dogs, who are " obliged, if any one throws a piece of 
meat into the ashes or on the ground, saying, ' There, dog, eat,' to fall 
upon it and devour it raw, like dogs or beasts of prey." (Maximilian, 
Prince of Wied, ''Travels," &c., London, 1843, pp. 356, 4-16.) 

A further multiplication of references is unnecessary. The above 
would appear to be enough to establish the existence of almost identical 
orgies in Europe, America, and Asia — orgies in which were perpetuated 
the ritualistic use of foods no longer employed by the populace, and pos- 
sibly commemorating a former condition of cannibalism. 

THE SACRIFICE OF THE DOG A SUBSTITUTION FOE HUMAN SACRIFICE. 

It would add much to the bulk of this chapter to show that the dog 
has almost invariably been employed as a substitute for man in sacrifice. 
Other animals have performed the same vicarious office, but none to the 
same extent, especially among the more savage races. To the American 
Indians and other peoples of a corresponding stage of development the 
substitution presents no logical incongruity. Their religious conceptions 
are so strongly tinged with zoolatry that the assignment of animals to 
the rdle of deities or of victims is the most natural thing in the world ; 
but their belief is not limited to the idea that the animal is sacred — it 
comprehends, additionally, a settled appreciation of the fact that lycan- 
thropy is possible, and that the medicine-men possess the power of trans- 
forming men into animals or animals into men. Such a l>elief was 
expressed to the writer in the most forcible way, in the village of Zuni, 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 21 

in 1881. The Indians were engaged in some one of their countless 
dances and ceremonies (and possibly not very far from the time of the 
urine dance), when the dancers seized a small dog and tore it limb from 
limb, venting upon it every torture that savage spite and malignity could 
devise. The explanation given was, that the hapless cur was a '' Navajo," 
a tribe with which the Zunis have been spasmodically hostile for genera- 
tions, and from whose ranks the fortunes of w^ar must have enabled them 
to drag an occasional captive to be put to the torture and sacrificed. 

UEINE IN HUMAN FOOD — CHINOOK OLIVES. 

The addition of urine to human food is mentioned by various writers. 
Speaking of the Chinooks, Paul Kane describes a delicacy manufactured 
by some of the Indians among whom he traveled, and called by him 
''Chinook olives." They were nothing more or less than acorns soaked 
for five months in human urine. (Kane, ''Artist's Wanderings in North 
America," London, 1859, p. 187.) Spencer copies Kane's story in his 
Descriptive Sociology, article "Chinooks.". 

URINE USED IN BREAD-MAKING. 

A comparatively late writer says of the Mokis of Arizona : 

They are not as clean in their housekeeping as the Navajoes, and it is hinted that they 
sometimes mix their meal with chamber-lye for these festive occasions, but I did not 
know that until I talked with Mormons who had visited them. — (J. H. Beadle, "Western 
Wilds," Cincinnati, Ohio, 1878, p. 279.) 

Beadle lived and ate with the Mokis for a number of days. This 
story, coming from the Mormons, may refer to some imperfectly under- 
stood ceremonial. 

URINE USED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF SALT. 

Gomara explains that, mixed with palm-scrapings, human urine served 
as salt to the Indians of Bogota.* 

SIBERIAN HOSPITALITY. 

A curious manifestation of hospitality has been noticed among the 
Tchuktchi of Siberia : 

Las Tschuktschi offrent leurs femmes aux voyage urs ; mais ceux-ci, pour s'en rendre 
dignes, doivent se soumettre a une epreuve d^goutante. La fille ou la femme qui doit 
passer la nuit avec son nouvel hote lui presente une tasse pleine de son urine ; il faut 
qu'il s'en rince la bouche. S'il a ce courage, il est regard^ comme un ami sincere ; sinon, 
il est trait6 comme un ennemi de la famille. — (Dulaure, " Des Divinit6s Generatrices," 
Paris, 1825, p. 400.) 

*Hacen sal de raspaduras de palma y orinas de hombre. — (G6mara, Historia de las Indias, p. 202.) 



22 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

The presentation of women to distinguished strangers is a mark of 
savage hospitality noted all over the world, but never in any other place 
with the above peculiar accompaniment ; yet, Mungo Park assures his 
readers that, during his travels in the interior of Africa, a wedding 
occurred among the Moors while he was asleep. He was awakened from 
his doze by an old woman bearing a wooden bowl, whose contents she 
discharged full in his face, saying it was a present from the bride. 

Finding this to be the same sort of holy water with which a Hottentot priest is said to 
sprinkle a newly-married couple, he supposed it to be a mischievous frolic, but was in- 
formed that it was a nuptial benediction from the bride's own person, and which, on such 
occasions, is always received by the young unmarried Moors as a mark of distinguished 
favor. — (Quoted in Brand, Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 2, p. 152, article 
"Bride- Ales." See, also, Mungo Park's "Travels in Africa," New York, 1813, p. 
109.) 

In the last two citations religious or at least superstitious motives 
obtrude themselves; those to follow show these in a much more marked 
degree. 

POISONOUS MUSHROOMS USED IN UR-ORGIES. 

The Indians in and around Cape Flattery, on the Pacific coast of Brit- 
ish North America, retain the urine dance in an unusually repulsive form. 
As was learned from Mr. Kennard, U. S. Coast Survey, whom the 
writer had the pleasure of meeting in Washington, D. C, in 1886, the 
medicine men distil, from potatoes and other ingredients, a vile liquor, 
which has an irritating and exciting effect upon the kidneys and bladder. 
Each one who has partaken of this dish immediately urinates and passes 
the result to his next neighbor, who drinks. The effect is as above, and 
likewise a temporary insanity or delirium, during which all sorts of mad 
capers are carried on. The last man who quaffs the poison, distilled 
through the persons of five or six comrades, is so completely overcome 
that he falls, in a dead stupor. 

Precisely the same use of a poisonous fungus has been described 
among the natives of the Pacific coast of Siberia, according to the learned 
Dr. J. W. Kingsley (of Brome Hall, Scole, England). Such a rite is 
outlined by Schultze. "The Shamans of Siberia drink a decoction of 
toad-stools or the urine of those who have become narcotized by that 
plant." (Schultze, ''Fetichism," New York, 1885, p. 52.*) 

♦Corroborative testimony was also received by the author from Mr. George Kennan, of Wash- 
ington, D. C, who lived for three years among the Tchuktchi, Baruts, and Yakuts of Siberia. 



URINE DANCES AND UE- ORGIES. 23 

A SIMILAR USE OF FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE 

MEXICANS. 

That some such use of poisonous fungi was made by other nations 
would be difficult to prove in the absence of direct testimony ; but many 
incidental references are encountered which the reflective mind must con- 
sider with care before rejecting as absolutely irrelevant in this connec- 
tion. The Mexicans, as we learn from Sahagun, were not ignorant of 
the mushroom, which is described as the basis of one of their festivals. 
He says that they ate the nanacatl, a poisonous fungus which intoxicated 
as much as wine ; after eating it, they assembled in a plain, where they 
danced and sang by night and by day to their fullest desire. This was 
on the first day, because on the following day they all wept bitterly, 
and they said that they were cleaning themselves and washing their eyes 
and faces with their tears.* 

It is true that Sahagun does not describe any specially revolting feature 
in this orgie, but it is equally patent that he is describing from hearsay, 
and, probably, was not allowed to know too much. In a second reference 
to this fungus^ which he now calls teo-nanacatl, he alludes to the toxic 
properties, which coincide closely with those of the mushrooms noted in 
Siberia and on the northwest coast of America: 

There are some mushrooms in this country which are called teo-nanacatl. They grow 
under the grass in the fields and plains ; "^ * * they are hurtful to the throat and 
intoxicate '^ "^ ^ ^ those who eat them see visions and feel flutterings in the heart ; 
those who eat many of them are excited to lust, and even so if they eat but few.f 

The proof is not at all conclusive that this intoxication was produced 
as among the Siberian and Cape Flattery tribes ; but it is very odd that 
the Aztecs should eat mushrooms for the same purpose ; that they should 
hold their dance out in a plain and by night (that is, in a place as remote 
as possible from Father Sahagun's inspection). On the second day, to 
trust Sahagun's explanation, they would appear to have bewailed their 
behavior on the first; although it should be remarked here that cere- 
monial weeping has not been unknown to the American aborigines, and 

* Nanacatl, que son los hongos malos que emborrachan tan bien como el vino; y se juntaban en 
un llano despues de haberlo coraido, donde bailaban y cantaban de noche y de dia i. su placer ; y esto 
el primer dia porque al dia siguiente Uoraban todos mucho y decian que se limpiaban y lavaban 
los ojos y caras con sus lagrimas.— (Sahagun, in Kingsborough's "Mexican Antiquities," vol. 
7, p. 308.) 

tHay unos honguillos en esta tierra que sc llaman teo-nanacatl ; crianse debajo del heno en los 
campos 6 plramos * * * dafian la garganta y emborrachan * * * los que los comen ven 
visfones y sienten buscas eu el corazon ; d. los que comen muchos de ellos provocan £ luxuria, y 
aunque sean pocos.— (Sahagun, in Kingsborough's "Mexican Antiquities," vol. 7, p. 369.) 



24 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

may, in this case, have been induced by causes not revealed to the 
stranger. Lastly, it is important to note that this poisonous fungus was 
a violent excitant, a nervous irritant, and an aphrodisiac. 

Another early Spanish observer, also cited by Kingsborough, describes 
them in these terms: 

They had another kind of drunkenness, * -s^- ^ which was with small fungi or mush- 
rooms, * ^ * which are eaten raw, and, on account of being bitter, they drink after 
them or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly after that they see a thousand 
visions, especially snakes. 

They went raving mad, running about the streets in a wild state 
C' bestial embriaguez "). They called these fungi '' teo-na-m-catl," a word 
meaning ''bread of the gods." 

This author does not allude to any effect upon the kidneys.* 
X The list of quotations is not yet complete. Tezozomoc, also an author 
of repute, relates that at the coronation of Montezuma the Mexicans gave 
wild mushrooms to the strangers to eat; that the strangers became drunk, 
and thereupon began to dance, f All of which is a terse description of a 
drunken orgie induced by poisonous mushrooms, but not represented 
with the disgusting sequences which would have served to establish a 
connection with urine dances. 

Diego Duran also gives the particulars of the coronation of this Mon- 
tezuma (the second of the name and the one on the throne at the date of 
the arrival of Cortes). He says that, after the usual human sacrifices 
had been offered up in the temples, all went to eat raw mushrooms, which 
caused them to lose their senses and affected them more than if they had 
drunls: much wine. So utterly beside themselves were they that many 
of them killed themselves with their own hands, and by the potency of 
those mushrooms they saw visions and had revelations of the future, the 
devil speaking to them in their drunkenness.^ Duran, of course, is not 

* Tenian otra manera de embriaguez * * * era con unos bongos 6 setas pequenas * * * que 
comidos crudos y por ser amargos, beben traa ellos 6 comen con ellos un poco de niiel do abejas, y 
de alii d poco rato, veian mil visiones y en especial culebras. — (By the author of " Ritos Antiguos. 
Sacrificios 6 idolatrias de los Indios en Nueva Espana," Kingsborough, vol. ix, p. 17.) 

This author seems to have been the Franciscan Fray Toribio de Bcnvento, oommouly called by 
his Aztec nickname of " Motolinia, the Beggar." He is designated by Kingsborough "the Un- 
known Franciscan." because, through motives of humility, he declined to subscribe his name to 
his valuable writings. 

t A los estranjeros, les di^ron d comer bongos montesinos que se embriagaban con ellos y con 
esto entrdron dladanza. — (Tezozomoc, "CronicaMexicana," in Kingsborough, " Mexican Antiqui- 
ties," vol. 9, p. 15:3.) 

X Ivan todos d comer bongos crudos, con la cual eomidasalian todos de juioio y quedaban peores 
que si hubieran bebido mucho vino tan embriagados y fuera de sentido que muchos de ellos se 
mataban con propria mano ; y con la fuerza de aquellos bongos vian visiones y tenian rebelacionos 
de lo porvenir hablandoles el Demonio en aquella embriaguez.— (Diego Duran, lib. 2. cap. ;">4, p. 
564.) 



URINE DANCES AND UE- ORGIES. 25 

describing what he saw. Doubtless, in that case, his narrative would 
have been more animated and, possibly, more to our purpose. 

MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS WORSHIPED BY AMERICAN INDIANS. 

Dorman is authority for the statement that mushrooms were worshiped 
by the Indians of the Antilles, and toad-stools by those in Virginia,* but 
for what toxic or therapeutic qualities, real or supposed, he does not say. 

A FORMER USE OF FUNGUS INDICATED IN THE MYTHS OF CEYLON, 
AND IN THE LAWS OF THE BRAHMINS. 

On the west shore of the Pacific Ocean, aside from the orgies of the 
Siberian Shamans, no instance is on record of the use of the mushroom 
or other fungus in religious rites in the present day. 

A former use of it is indicated in the Cingalese myths, which teach 
that — 

Chance produced a species of mushroom called mattikaf or jessathon, on which they 
lived for sixty-five thousand years ; but, being determined to make an equal division of 
this, also, they lost it. Luckily for them, another creeping plant [mistletoe?] called 
badrilata grew up, on which they (the Brahmins) fed for thirty-five thousand years, but 
which they lost for the same reason as the former ones. — (Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 
1807, vol. 7, p. 441.) 

Among the Brahmins of the main-land no such myth is related ; but 
an English writer says : 

The ancient Hindus held the fungus in such detestation that Yama, a legislator, sup- 
posed now to be the judge of departed spirits, declares : ''Those who eat mushrooms, 
whether springing from the ground 6v growing on a tree, fully equal in guilt to the slayers 
of Brahmins and the most despicable of all deadly sinners." — (Asiatic Researches, Cal- 
cutta, 1795, vol. 4, p. 311.) 

Dubois refers to the same subject. The Brahmins, he says — 

Have also retrenched from their vegetable food, which is the great fund of their sub- 
sistence, all roots which form a head or bulb in the ground, such as onions, J and those 

*Rushton M. Dorman, "Primitive Superstitions," New York, 1881, p. 295. 

tThe word " mattika " cannot be found in Forbes' English-Hindustani Dictionary (London, 1848.) 
It may, perhaps, belong to an extinct dialect. The word " matt," meaning " drunk," would serve 
a good purpose for this article could a relationship be shown to exist between it and mattika. This 
the author is of course unable to do, being totally ignorant of Hindustani. Neither does " badri- 
lata" occur in Forbes, who interprets "mistletoe" as "banda." The contributor to the Asiatic 
Researches, who used the word, though it meant "agaric." 

tHiggins believes that the ancient Egyptians had discovered similarity between the coats of an 
onion and the planetary spheres, and says that it was called (by the Greeks), from being sacred 
to the father of ages, oionoon— onion. * * * The onion was adored (as the black stone in West- 
minster Abbey is by us) }w the Egyptians for this property, as a type of the eternal renewal of 
ages. * * * The onion is adored in India, and forbidden to be eaten. — (Quoting Forster's 
Sketches of Hindoos, p. 35, Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. 2, p. 427.) 



26 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

also which assume the same shape above ground, like mushrooms and some others. 
* * * Are we to suppose that they had discovered something unwholesome in the 
one species and prescribed the other on account of its fetid smell ? This I cannot decide ; 
all the information I have ever obtained from those among them whom I have consulted 
on the reasons of their abstinence from them being that it is customary to avoid such 
articles. — (Abbe Dubois, "People of India," London, 1817, p. 117.) 

This inhibition, under such dire penalties, can have but one meaning. 
In primitive times, the people of India must have been so addicted to 
the debauchery induced by potions into the composition of which entered 
poisonous fungi and mistletoe (the mushroom ''growing on a tree") and 
the effects of such debauchery must have been found so debasing and 
pernicious that the priest-rulers were compelled to employ the same male- 
dictions which Moses proved of efficacy in withdrawing the children of 
Israel from the worship of idols.* 

AN INQUIRY INTO THE DRUIDICAL USE OF THE MISTLETOE. 

But the question at once presents itself, for what reason did the Celtic 
Druids employ the much-venerated mistletoe? This question becomes 
of deep significance in the light of the learning shed by Godfrey Hig- 
gins and General Vallencey upon the derivation of the Druids from a 
Buddhistic or Brahminical origin. f 

That the mistletoe was regarded as a medicine, and a very potent one, 
is easy enough to show. All the encyclopaedias admit that much, but the 
accounts that have been preserved of the ideas avSsociated with this wor- 
ship are not complete or satisfactory. 

The mistletoe, which they (the Druids) called "all-heal," used to cure disease. — (Mc- 
Clintock and Strong's Encyclopaedia, quoting Stukeley.) 

Within recent times the mistletoe has been regarded as a valuable remedy in epilepsy 
[Query: On the principle of si;m7ia similibusf] and other diseases, but at present is 
not employed. * * * The leaves have been fed to sheep in time of scarcity of other 
forage. [Which shows, at least, that it is edible.] — (Appleton's American Encyclopaedia.) 

Seems to possess no decided medicinal properties. — (International Encyclopaedia.) 

Pliny mentions three varieties ; of these — 

The hyphar is useful for fattening cattle, if they are hardy enough to withstand the 
purgative effects it produces at first. * "^ * The viscura is medicinally of value as an 
emollient, and in cases of tumors, ulcers, and the like. 

* But on the 6th day of the moon's age *' women walk in the forests with a fan in one hand and 

eat certain veoetnbles, in hope of beautiful children. See the account given by Pliny of the Druid- 
ical mistletoe or viscuni, which was to be gathered when the moon was six days old, as a preserva- 
tive from sterility. "—(Sir William Jones, in Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1790, vol. ',\, art. 12. p. 284; 
quoted by Edward Moor, " Hindu Pantheon," London. 1810, p. l.'U.) 

t It is now, perhaps, impossible to account for the veneration in whichit was held and the won- 
derful qualities which it was supposed to possess.— ("The Druids," Reverend RichnrjfcSraiddy, 
Dublin. 1871. p. 90.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 27 

Pliny is also quoted as saying that it was considered of benefit to 
women in childbirth — " in conceptum feminaram adjuvare si omnino 
secum. habeant."* Pliny is also authority for the reverence in which the 
mistletoe growing on the robur (Spanish ''roble," or evergreen oak) was 
held by the Druids. . The robur, he says, is their sacred tree, and what- 
ever is found growing upon it they regard as sent from heaven, and as 
the mark of a tree chosen by God. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) 

Brand (Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 1, art. ''Mistletoe") 
cites the opinion of various old authors that mistletoe was regarded '' as 
a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other con- 
vulsive disorders. * * * XJ^e high veneration in which the Druids 
were held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from 
the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak. 
* * * The mistletoe of the oak, which is very rare, is vulgarly said 
to be a cure for wind-ruptures in children ; the kind which is found upon 
the apple is said to be good for fits." 

Much testimony may be adduced to show that the mistletoe was valued 
as an aphrodisiac, as conducive to fertility, as sacred to love, and, in gen- 
eral terms, an excitant of the genito-urinary organs, which is the very 
purpose for which the Siberian and North American medicine- men em- 
ployed the fungus, and perhaps the very reason for which both fungus 
and mistletoe were excluded from the Brahminical dietary. 

Brand shows that mistletoe '' was not unkown in the religious cere- 
monies of the ancients, particularly the Greeks," and that the use of it, 
savoring strongly of Druidism, prevailed at the Christmas service of 
York Cathedral down to our own day. (See in Brand, Popular Antiqui- 
ties, London, 1849, vol. 1, p. 524.) 

The merry pastime of kissing pretty girls under the Christmas mistle- 
toe seems to have a phallic derivation. "This very old custom has 
descended from feudal times, but its real origin and significance are 
lost." (Appleton's American Encyclopaedia.) Brand shows that the 
young men observed the custom of "plucking off a berry at each kiss." 
(Vol. 1, p. 524.) Perhaps, in former times, they were required to swal- 
low the berry. 

A writer in Notes and Queries (January 3, 1852, vol. 5, p. 13) quotes 
Nares, to the effect that " the maid who was not kissed under it at 

* Montfaucon says of the Druids: "Ilscroient que les animaux steriles deviennent feconds en 
buvant de I'eau de Gui."— (L'antiquite Expliquee, Paris, 1722, tome 2, part 2, p. 436— quoting and 
translating Pliny.) 



28 URINE DANCES AND UE-OIWIES. 

Christmas would not be married in that year." But another writer 
(February 28, 1852, same volume) points out that " we should refer the 
custom to the Scandinavian mythology, wherein the mistletoe is dedicated 
to Friga, the Venus of the Scandinavians."* 

Another writer (Notes and Queries, 2d series, vol. 4, p. 506) says : 

As it was supposed to possess the mystic power of giving fertility and a power to pre- 
serve from poison, the pleasant ceremony of kissing under the mistletoe may have some 
reference to this belief. 

In vol. 3, p. 343, it is stated : 

A Worcestershire farmer was accustomed to take down his bough of mistletoe and give 
it to the cow that calved first after New Year's Day. This was supposed to insure good 
luck to the whole dairy. Cows, it may be remarked, as well as sheep, will devour mistle- 
toe with avidity. 

And still another, in 2d series, vol. 6, p. 523, recognizes that '' the 
mistletoe was sacred to the heathen goddess of Beauty," and " it is cer- 
tain that the mistletoe, though it formerly had a place among the ever- 
greens employed in the Christian decorations, was subsequently excluded." 
This exclusion he accounts for thus : 

It is also certain that, in the earlier ages of the church, many festivities not at all tend- 
ing to edification (the practice of mutual kissing among the rest) had gradually crept in 
and established themselves; so that, at a certain part of the service, "statim clerus, 
ipseque populus per basia blande sese invicim oscularetur. ' ' 

This author cites Hone, Hook, Moroni, Bescherelle, Ducange, and 
others. Finally, in the 3d series, vol. 7, p. 76, an inquirer asks " how 
came it, in Shakespeare's time, to be considered ' baleful,' and, in our 
days, the most mirth-provoking of plants ;" and still another correspond- 
ent, in same series, vol. 7, p. 237, claims that " mistletoe will produce 
abortion in the female of the deer or dog." 

FORMER EMPLOYMENT OF AN INFUSION OR DECOCTION OF MISTLETOE. 

That an infusion or decoction of the plant was once in use may be 
gathered from the fact narrated by John Eliot Howard : 

Water, in which the sacred mistletoe had been immersed, was given to or sprinkled 
upon the people. — (''The Druids and their Religion," John Eliot Howard, in Transactions 
of Victoria Institute, vol. 14, p. 118, quoting " Le gui de chene et les Druides," E. Mag- 

daleine, Paris, 1877.t) 

*It was the only plant in the world which could harm Baldur, the son of Odin and Friga. When 
a branch of it struck him he fell dead. — (See in Bullfinch's Mj'thology, revised by Reverend E. E. 
Hale. Boston, 1883, p. 428.) 

'* When found growing on the oak," the mistletoe "represented man."— (Opinion of the French 
writer Reynaud, in his article " Druidism," quoted in the Eucyclopoedia Britannioa.) 

tSee notes on the Hindu Lingam of this monograph. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 29 

THE MISTLETOE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN HELD SACRED BY THE 

MOUND-BUILDERS. 

An American writer says, that among the Mound-builders the mistle- 
toe was '^ the holiest and most rare of evergreens," and that when human 
sacrifices were offered to sun and moon the victim was covered with 
mistletoe, which was burnt as an incense. (Pidgeon, '^Dee-coo-dah," 
New York, 1853, p. 91, &c.) Pidgeon claimed to receive his knowledge 
from Indians versed in the traditions and lore of their tribes.* 

Mrs. Eastman presents a drawing of what may be taken as the altar 
of Haokah, the anti-natural God of the Sioux, in which is a representa- 
tion of a 'Harge fungus that grows on trees " (query, mistletoe?), which, 
if eaten by an animal, will cause its death, f 

THE MISTLETOE FESTIVAL OF THE MEXICANS. 

That the Mexicans had a reverence for the mistletoe would seem to be 
assured. They had a mistletoe festival. In October they celebrated 
the festival of the Neypachtly, or bad eye, which was a plant growing 
on trees and hanging from them, gray with the dampness of rain ; es- 
pecially did it grow on the different kinds of oak.| The informant says 
he can give no explanation of this festival. 

VESTiaES OF DRUIDICAL RITES IN FRANCE AT PRESENT DAY. 

It may be interesting to detect vestiges of Druidical rites tenaciously 
adhering to the altered life of modern civilization. 

In the department of Seine et Oise, twelve leagues from Paris (says a recent writer), 
when a child had a rupture (hernia) he was brought under a certain oak, and some women, 
who no doubt earned a living in that trade, danced around the oak, muttering spell- 
words till the child was cured, that is, dead. — (Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. 7, p. 
163.) 

It has already been shown that the Druids ascribed this very medical 
quality to the mistletoe of the oak. 

Other curious instances of survival present themselves in the linguist- 
ics of the subject. The French word ''gui," meaning mistletoe, is not of 

*See also Ellen Russell Emerson, "Indian Myths," Boston, 1884, p. 331, wherein Pidgeon is 
quoted. 

t " Legends of the Sioux," Eastman, New York, 1849, p. 210. Readers interested in the subject of 
Indian altars will find descriptions, with colored plates, in the coming work of Surgeon Wash ington 
Matthews, U. S. Army, and in the "Snake dance of the Moquis of Arizona," by the author. 

JNeypachtly, quiere decir " mal ojo;" es una yerva que nace en los arboles y cuelga de ellos, 
parda con la humedad de las aguas, especialmente se cria en los encinales y robles.— (Diego Duran, 
vol. 3, cap. 16, p. 391^. Manuscript copy in Congressional Library, Washington, D. C.) 



30 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

Latin but of Druidical derivation, and so the Spanish ''aguinaldo," mean- 
ing Christmas or New Year's present, conserves the cry, slightly altered, 
of the Druid priest to the ''gui" at the opening of the new year. 

cow DUNG AND COW URINE IN RELIGION. 

The sacrificial value of cow dung and cow urine throughout India and 
Thibet is much greater than the reader might be led to infer from the 
brief citation already noted from Max Mtiller. 

Hindu merchants in Bokhara now lament loudly at the sight of a piece of cow's flesh, 
and at same time mix with their food that it may do them good the urine of a sacred 
cow kept in that place. — (Erman, "Siberia," London, 1848, vol. 1, p. 384.) 

Picart naiTates that the Brahmans fed grain to a sacred cow and 
afterward searched in the ordure for the sacred, grains, which they 
picked out whole, drying them and administering to the sick not merely 
as a medicine, but as a sacred thing.* 

Not only among the people of the lowlands, but among those of the 
foot-hills of the Himalayas as well, do these rites find place; ''the very 
dung of the cow is eaten as an atonement for sin, and its urine is used 
in worship." (Notes on the Hill Tribes of the Neilgherries, Short, Trans. 
Ethnol. Society, London, 1868, p. 268.) 

The greatest, or, at any rate, the most convenient of all purifiers is the urine of a cow ; 
* * * images are sprinkled with it. No man of any pretentions to piety or cleanli- 
ness would pass a cow in the act of staling without receiving the holy stream in his hand 
and sipping a few drops. * * * jf the animal be retentive, a pious expectant will 
impatiently apply his finger, and by judicious tickling excite the grateful flow. — (Moor's 
"Hindu Pantheon," London, 1810, p. 148.) 

Dubois, in his chapter " Restoration to the Caste," says that a Hindu 
penitent " must drink the panchakaryam — a word which literally signi- 
fies the five things, namety, milk, butter, curd, dung, and urine, all 
mixed together," and he adds : 

The urine of the cow is held to be the most efficacious of any for purifying all imagina- 
ble unclean ness. I have often seen the superstitious Hindu accompanying these animals 

* Apres avoir donno du riz en pot, k manger aux vaches ils vont fouiller dans la bouze et en retir- 
ent les grains qu'ils trouvent entiers. Ils font s»'cher ces grains et les donncnt ^ Icurs malades. non 
sculement comme un r^mode raais encore comme une chose sainte.— (Picart, " Cofltumes et Cere- 
monies r^ligieuses," Ac, Amsterdam. 1729. vol. 7, p. 18.) 

This is neither l)etter nor worse than the custom of the Indians of Texas, Florida, and California, 
herein before described. 
Chez Ics Indiens, la bouze de la vache est tres sainte.— (Picart, Idem, vol. 6. part 2, p. 191-193.) 
Picart also discloses that the Banians swear by a cow— (Idem, vol. 7, p. 10.) 

The author of this article learned while campaigning with General Crook against the hostile 
Sioux and Cheyennes in lH7t) and 1877 that the Sioux and Assinniboines had a form of oath sworn 
to while the aftiant held in each hand a piece of buffalo chip. 

A small quantity of the urine (of the cow) is daily sipped by some (of the Hindus).— (Asiatic Re- 
searches, Calcutta, 1805. vol. 8, p. 81.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 31 

when in the pasture and watching the moment for receiving the urine as it fell in vessels 
which he had brought for the purpose, to carry it home in a fresh state ; or, catching it 
in the hollow of his hand, to bedew his face and all his body. When so used, it removes 
all external impurity, and when taken internally, which is very common, it cleanses all 
within.— (Abbe Dubois, "People of India," London, 1817, p. 29.) 

Very frequently the excrement is first reduced to ashes. The monks 
of Chivem, called Pandarones, smear their faces, breasts, and arms with 
the ashes of cow dung ; they run through the streets demanding alms, 
very much as the Zuni actors demanded a feast, and chant the praises of 
Chivem, while they carry a bundle of peacock feathers in the hand and 
wear the lingam at the neck.* 

cow DUNG ALSO USED BY THE ISRAELITES. 

In another place Dulaure calls attention to the similar use among the 
Hebrews of the ashes of the dung of the red heifer as an expiatory 
sacrifice, t 

HUMAN ORDURE USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES. 

Among the Banians of India proselytes are obliged by the Brahmans 
to eat cow dung for six months. They begin with one pound daily, and 
diminish from day to day. A subtle commentator, says Picart, might 
institute a comparison between the nourishment of these fanatics and the 
dung of cows which the Lord ordered the prophet Ezekiel to mingle 
with his food. I 

This was the opinion held by Voltaire on this subject. Speaking of 
the prophet Ezekiel, he said, '' He is to eat bread of barley, wheat, beans, 
lentils, and millet, and to cover it with human excrement." It is thus, 
he says, that the ''children of Israel shall eat their bread defiled among 
the nations among which they shall be banished." But, "after having 

*Les moines de Chivem sout nommes Pandarons. lis se barbouillent le visage, la poitrine, et 
Ics bras avec des cendres de bouse de vache; ils parcourent les rues, deinandent I'aumone et chan- 
tent les louanges de Chivem, eu portant un paquet de plumes de paon a la main et le lingam pendu 
au cou. — (Dulaure, "Des Divinitcs generatrices," Paris, 1825, p. 105.) 

tLes Hebreux sacrifiaient et faisaient briiler la vache rousse, dont les cendres melees avec de 
I'eau servaient aux expiations. Chez les Indiens, les cendres de la bouse de vache sont egalement 
employees aux expiations. — f^Dulaure, idem, chap. 1, pp. 23, 24.) 

They shall burn in the fire their dung. — (Levit., xvi: 27.) 

Her blood with her dung shall he burn. — (Numbers, xix: 5.) 

tDisons un mot de la maniere dont les Proselytes des Banians sont obliges de vivre les premiss 
mois de leur conversion. Les Brahmines leur ordonnent de meler de la fiente de la vache dans 
l^out ce qu'ils mangent pendant ce terns de regeneration. * * * Que ne diroit pas ici un com- 
mentateur subtil qui voudroit coraparer la nourriture de ces proselytes avec les ordres que Dieu 
donna autrefois ^ Ezechiel de meler de la fiente de vache dans ses aliraens. Ezekiel, iv.— (Picart, 
" C6utumes et ceremonies religieuses," &c., Amsterdam, 1729, vol. 7, p. 15.) " And thou shalt eat 
it as barley cakes, and thou shalt eat it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight." — 
(Ezekiel, iv: 12.) 



32 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

eaten this bread of affliction, God permits him to cover it with the ex- 
crement of cattle simply." * 

The view entertained by some biblical commentators is that the ex- 
crement was used for baking the bread; but if this be true, why should 
human faeces be used for such a purpose. (Consult Lange's Commentaries, 
article '" Ezekiel," and McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia, article 
''Dung.") 

There is also a purification of the soul of the dying by the same peculiar 
methods. In Coromandel, the dying man is so placed that his face will 
come under the tail of a cow ; the tail is lifted and the cow excited to void 
her urine. If the urine fall upon the face of the sick man, the people 
cry out with joy, considering him to be one of the. blessed, but if the 
sacred animal be in no humor to gratify their wishes, they are greatly 
afflicted, t 

Monier Williams repeats almost what Mtiller says about the Parsis. 
A young Parsi undergoes a sort of confirmation, during which " he is 
made to drink a small quantity of the urine of a bull." (Monier Williams, 
'' Modern India," London, 1878, p. 178.) ' And in describing the crema- 
tion of a Hindoo corpse at Bombay, the same author relates that the 
ashes of the pyre were sprinkled with water, a cake of cow dung placed 
in the center, and around it a small stream of cow urine ; upon this were 
placed plantain leaves, rice-cakes, and flowers. ('' Modern India," p. 65.) 

THE ASSYEIAN VENUS HAD OFFERINGS OF DUNG PLACED UPON HER 

ALTARS. 

Another authority states that '' the zealous adorers of Siva rub the 
forehead, breast, and shoulders Avith ashes of cow dung;" and further 
he adds : 

It is very remarkable that the Assyrian Venus, according to Lucian, had also offerings 
of dung placed ujDon her altars. — (Maurice, "Indian Antiquities," London, 1800, vol. 1, 
pp. 172, 173.) 

Speaking of the sacrifice called Poojah, Maurice says: 

The Brahman prepares a place which is purified with dried cow dung, with which the 
pavement is spread, and the room is sprinkled with the urine of the same animal. — 
{Idem, vol. 1, p. 77.) 

*" II doit manger du pain du froment, d'orgc, de f^ves, de Icntilles, de millets et le couvrir d'ex- 
crcmons humains," etc. — (Voltaire, Essais sur les Moeurs, vol. 1, p. 195. Paris, 1785.) 

t Au Coroinandel, ils inettent lo visage du mourant ?ur lo dorri6rc d'une vache. Invent la queue 
do I'animal ct rexcitent il lacher son urino sur lo visage * * * gj I'urino coule sur la face du 
malade, rasscmbli-c s'ocric do joye ct lo conipte parmi los bienhcureux, niais * * * si la vache 
n'cst pas d'humcur d'uriner, on s'en aftligc.— (Picart, "Costumes ot ceremonies roligieuses," ic. 
Amsterdam, 1729, vol. 7, p. 28.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 33 

In one of the Hindu fasts the devotee adopts these disgusting excreta 
as his food. On the fourth day ^'his disgusting beverage is the urine 
of the cow ; the fifth, the excrement of that holy animal is his allotted 
food." (Maurice, ''Indian Antiquities/' London, 1800, vol. 5, p. 222.) 

Maurice cites five meritorious kinds of suicide, in the second of which 
the Hindu devotee is described as "covering himself with cow dung, 
setting it on fire, and consuming himself therein." (Maurice, ''Indian 
Antiquities," London, 1800, vol. 2, p. 49.*) 

Doors of houses are smeared with cow dung and nimba leaves, as a 
preservative from poisonous reptiles. (Moor's "Hindu Pantheon," Lon- 
don, 1810, p. 23.) 

THE SACRED COW's EXCRETA A SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE. 

The foregoing testimony, which could readily be" swelled in volume, 
proves the sacred character of these excreta, which may be looked upon 
as substitutes for a more perfect sacrifice. In the early life of the Hin- 
dus it is more than likely that the cow or the heifer was slaughtered 
by the knife or burnt ; as population increased in density, domestic cattle 
became too costly to be off'ered as a frequent oblation, and on the princi- 
ple that the part represents the whole, hair, milk, butter, urine, and 
ordure superseded the slain carcass, while the incinerated excrement was 
made to do duty as a burnt sacrifice, f 

It was hardly probable that such practices, or an explanation of the 
causes which led to their adoption and perpetuation, should have escaped 
the keen criticism of E. B. Tylor. He says : 

For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations, the Hindu has recourse to the 
sacred cow. * , * * The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustration which well 
shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow's urine and 
water. * * * Applications of ' ' nirang, ' ' washed off with water, form part of the 
daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born 
child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, and 
the purification of him who has touched a corpse. — (E. B. Tylor, "Primitive Culture," 
London, 1871, vol. 2, pp. 396, 397.) 

* The Hebrew prophets bedaubed themselves with ordure and sat on dung-heaps, while the re- 
calcitrant people of Israel were warned: "Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces, even the 
dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it." — (Malachi, 2: 3.) 

tSuch an economic tendency in the sacrificial practices of the Parsis is shown by Tylor. The 
Vedic sacrifice, Agnishtoma, required that animals should be slain and their flesh partly committed 
to the gods by fire, partly eaten by sacrificers and priests. The Parsi ceremony, Izeshnc, formal 
successor of this bloody rite, requires no animal to be killed, but it suflSces to place the hair of an 
ox in a vessel and show it to the fire.— (Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. 2, 
p. 400.) 



34 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

This citation is valuable because it supports with such authority the 
conclusion which must have entered the minds of all who have scanned 
these pages, that the Parsi and Brahminical ceremonials are offshoots 
from a common stock. But of even greater value is the testimony, also 
collected by Tylor, in regard to substitutive sacrifices, in which the fact 
is made to appear that the sacred cow of India takes the place originally 
occupied by a human victim.* His explanation is of such interest that 
space may well be claimed for it in this chapter : 

It will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone for a human life, if 
we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a bullock, 
or a Kimbunda will expiate the blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood 
will wash away the other. For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice, 
the following may serve : Among the Khonds of Orissa, where Colonel MacPherson was 
engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by the sect of the Earth-goddess, 
they at once began to discuss the plan of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now, 
there is some reason to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for 
the following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that those who wor- 
shijD the Light-god hold a festival in his honor, when they slaughter a buffalo in com- 
memoration of the time when, as they say, the Earth -goddess was prevailing on men to 
offer human sacrifices to her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody- 
minded Earth-goddess under a mountain and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle, saying: 
" Liberate the man and sacrifice the buffalo." It looks as though this legend, divested 
of its mythic garb, may really record a historical suljstitution of animal for human sacrifice. 

In Ceylon, the exorcist will demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, 
and the patient in frenzy answers, giving the demon's name, " I am So-and-So ; I demand 
a human sacrifice, and I will not go without." The victim is promised, the patient comes 
to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice is made, but instead of a man they 
offer a fowl. Classic examples of a substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice 
of a doe for a virgin to Artemis in Laodicaea, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniae. 

There appears to be a Semitic connection here, as there clearly is in the story of the 
JEolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth) instead of a new-born child a new- 
born calf, shoeing it with buskins and tending the mother cow as if a human mother. — 
("Primitive Culture," E. B. Tylor, London, 1871, vol. 2, p. 366 ; or in New York edi- 
tion, 1879, vol, 2, pp. 403, 404.) 

■ Inman takes the ground that the very same substitution occurred 
among the Hebrews. Commenting upon I Kings : xix, 18, he says : 

In the Vulgate, the passage is thus rendered : ''They say to these, 'Sacrifice the men 
who adore the calves ;' while the Septuagint renders the words 'Sacrifice men, for the 
calves have come to an end,' indicating a reversion to human sacrifice." — (Inman, 
Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, London, 1878, article "Hosea." Consult 

also Ragozin, "Assyria," New York, 1887, pp. 127, 128.) 

« 

* Dubois declares that in the Atharvana Veda "bloody sacrifices of victims (human not ex- 
cepted) arc there prescribed."— (Dubois, " People of India," London, 1817, p. 841.) And in those 
parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished, a substitutive ccrcmonj' was practiced 
" by forming a human figure of flour paste or clay, which they carry into the temple and there cut 
ofiFits head and mutilate it, in various ways, in presence of the idols." — {Idem, p. 490.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 35 

If the cow have displaced a human victim, may it not be within the 
limits of probability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine are 
substitutes not only for the complete carcass, but that they symbolize a 
former use of human excreta?* The existence of ur-orgies has been 
indicated in Siberia, where the religion partakes of many of the charac- 
teristics of Buddhism. The minatory phraseology of the Brahminical 
inhibition of the use of the fungi which enter into these orgies has been 
given verbatim; so that, even did no better evidence exist, enough has 
been presented to open up a wide range of discussion as to the former 
area of distribution of loathsome and disgusting ceremonials which are 
now happily restricted to small and constantly diminishing zones. 

HUMAN OEDURE AND URINE STILL USED IN INDIA. 

It is well to remember, however, that in India the more generally 
recognized efficacy of cow urine and cow dung has not blinded the fanati- 
cal devotee to the necessity of occasionally having recourse to the human 
product. 

At about ten leagues to the southward of Seringapatam there is a village called Nan- 
ja-na-gud, in which there is a temple famous all over the Mysore. Amongst the number 
of votaries of every caste who resort to it, a great proportion consists of barren women, 
who bring offerings to the god of the place, and pray for the gift of fruitfulness in return. 
But the object is not to be accomplished by the offerings and prayers alone, the disgusting 
part of the ceremony being still to follow. On retiring from the temple, the woman and 
her husband repair to the common sewer to which all the pilgrims resort in obedience to 
the calls of nature. There the husband and wife collect, with their hands, a quantity of 
the ordure, which they set apart, with a mark upon it, that it may not be touched by any 
one else ; and with their fingers in this condition, they take the water of the sewer in the 
hollow of their hands and drink it. Then they perform ablution and retire. In two or 
three days they return to the place of filth, to visit the mass of ordure which the}^ lefl. 
They turn it over with their hands, break it, and examine it in every possible way ; and, 
if they find that any insects or vermin are engendered in it, they consider it a favorable 
prognostic for the woman. — (Abb6 Dubois, "People of India," London, 1817, p. 411. f) 

EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS. 

The Romans and Egyptians went farther than this ; they had gods of 
excrement, whose special function was the care of latrines and those who 

* After the Jews had been humbled by the Lord and made to mingle human ordure with their 
bread, the punishment was mitigated by substitution. " Then he said unto me, Lo I I have given 
thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith."— (Ezekiel, iv : 15.) 

t Previous notes upon the Grand Lama of Thibet and upon the abominable practices of the 
Agozis and Gurus seem to be pertinent in this connection. See page 17. 



36 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

frequented them. Torquemada, a Spanish author of high repute, ex- 
presses this in very plain language : 

I assert that they used to adore (as St. Clement writes to St. James the Less) stinking 
and filthy privies and water-closets ; and, what is viler and yet more abominable, and an 
occasion for our tears and not to be borne with or so much as mentioned by name, they 
adored the noise and wind of the stomach when it expels from itself any cold or flatulence ; 
and other things of the same kind, which, according to the same saint, it would be a shame 
to name or describe.* 

In the preceding lines Torquemada refers to the Egyptians only, but, 
as will be seen by examining the Spanish notes below, his language is 
almost the same when speaking of the Romans. f The Roman goddess 
was called Cloacina. She was one of the first of the Roman deities, and 
is believed to have been named by Romulus himself. Under her charge 
were the various cloacae, sewers, privies, &c., of the Eternal City. J 

ISRAELITISH DUNG GODS. 

Dulaure quotes from a number of authorities to show that the Israelites 
and Moabites had the same ridiculous and disgusting ceremonial in their 
worship of Bel-phegor. The devotee presented his naked posterior before 
the altar and relieved his entrails, making an oflPering to the idol of the 

*Digo que adoraban (segun San Clemente escrive a Santiago el menor), las hediondas y sucias 
neccssarias y latrinas; y lo que es peor y mas abominable y digno de llorar y no de siifrir, ni nom- 
brarle per su nombre, que adoraban, el estruendo y crugimiento, que hace el vientre quando des- 
pide de si alguna frialdad 6 ventosidad y otras semejantes, que segun el mismo santo es verguenza 
nombrarlas y decirlas.— (Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, lib. 6. chap. 13, Madrid, 1723.) 

ILosRomanos * * * constituieron Diosadlos hediondas necesarias 6 latrinas y la adoraban y 
consagraban y ofrecian sacrificios. — (Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, lib. 6, chap. 16, Madrid, 1723.) 

X There is another opinion concerning Cloacina— that she was one of the names given to a statue 
of Venus found in the Cloaca Maxima. Smith, in his Dictionary of Antiquities, London, 1850, ex- 
presses this view, and seems to be followed by the American and Britannic Encyclopaedias. Lem- 
priere defines Cloacina: " A goddess of Rome, who presided over the Cloacae— some suppose her to 
be Venus — whose statue was found in the Cloacae, whence the name." See, also, in Anthon's 
Classical Dictionary. 

Higgins says that " the famous statue of Venus Cloacina was found in them (the Cloacae Max- 
imae) by Romulus." — (Anacalypsis, foot-note to p. 624, London, 1836.) 

Torquemada insists that the Romans borrowed this goddess from the Egyptians: "A esta 
diosa llamaron Cloacina, Diosa que prcsidia en sus albanares y los guardaba, que son los lugnres 
donde van ^parar todaslas suciedades, inmundicias, y vascosidades de una Republica."— (Torque- 
mada, lib. 6, chap. 17.) 

Torquemada, who makes manifest in his writings an intimate acquaintance with Greek and 
Roman mythology, fortifies his position by references from St. Clement, Itinerar, lib. 5; Lactan- 
tius, Divinas Ejus, lib. 1, chap. 20; Epistle of St. Clement to St. James the Less. Eusebius. de Prae- 
peratio Evangil,, chap. 1; St. Augustine, Civ. Dei, lib. 2, chap. 22; Diod, Sic, lib. 1, chap. 2, and lib. 
2, chap. 4 ; Lucian. Dialogues, Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, Pliny, lib. 10, chap. 27, and lib. 11, chap. 21 ; 
Theodoret, lib. 3, de Evangelii veritatis cognitiono. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES, 37 

foul emanations.* Dung gods are also mentioned as having been known 
to the chosen people during the time of their idolatry. f 

Besides Suchiquecal, the mother of the gods, who has been represented 
as eating excrement in token of humiliation, the Mexicans had other 
deities whose functions were more or less clearly complicated with alvine 
dejections. The most prominent of these was Ixcuina, called, also, Tla- 
9olteotl, of whom Brasseur de Bourbourg speaks in these terms : 

The goddess of ordure, or TlaQolquani, the eater of ordure, because she presided over 
loves and carnal pleasures. J 

Mendieta mentions her as masculine, and in these terms : 
The god of vices and dirtinesses, whom they called Tlazulteotl. ^ 

Bancroft speaks of ^' the Mexican goddess of carnal love, called Tlazolte- 
cotl, Ixcuina, Tlacloquani," &c., and says that she — 

* * * had in her service a crowd of dwarfs, buffoons, and hunchbacks, who diverted 
her with their songs and dances and acted as messengers to such gods as she took a fancy 
to. The last name of this goddess means "eater of filthy things," referring, it is said, 
to her function of hearing and pardoning the confessions of men and women guilty of 
unclean and carnal crimes. — (Bancroft, H. H. Native Races of the Pacific Slope, vol. 3, 
p. 380.) 

In the manuscript explaining the Codex Telleriano, given in Kings- 
borough's '^ Mexican Antiquities," vol. 5, p. 131, occurs the name of the 
goddess Ochpaniztli, whose feast fell on the 12ih of September of our 

*L'adorateur presentait devant I'autel son posterior nu, soulageait ses entrailles et faisait a I'idole 
une offrande de sa puante dejection. — (Dulaure, "DesDivinites Generatrices," Paris, 1825, p. 76.) 

Philo says the devotee of Baal-Peor presented to the idol all the outward orifices of the body. 
Another authority says that the worshiper not only presented all these to the idol, but that 
the emanations or excretions were also presented— tears from the eyes, wax from the ears, pus 
from the nose, saliva from the mouth, and urine and dejecta from the lower openings. This was 
the god to which the Jews joined themselves; and these, in all probability, were the ceremonies 
they practiced in his worship. — (Robert Allen Campbell, Phallic Worship, St. Louis, 1888, p. 171.) 

Still another authority says the worshiper, presenting his bare posterior to the altar, relieved his 
bowels, and offered the result to the idol : " Eo quod distendebant coram illo foramen podicis et 
stercus offerebant."— (Hargrave Jennings, Phallicism, London, 1884, quoting Rabbi Solomon Jar- 
chi, in his Commentary on Numbers XXV.) 

These two citations go to show that the worshiper intended making not a merely ceremonial 
offering of flatulence, but an actual oblation of excrement, such as has been stated, was placed upon 
the altars of their near neighbors, the Assyrians, in the devotions tendered their Venus. 

t Ye have seen dung gods, wood and stone.— (Deut., xxix : 17. See Cruden's Concordance Arti- 
cles, "Dung" and "Dungy," but no light is thrown upon the expression.) 

And ye have seen their abominations and their idols (detestable things), wood and stone, silver 
and gold, which were among them. — (Lange's Commentary on Deuteronomy, edited by Dr. Philip 
Schaff, New York, 1879. But in foot-note one reads, " Margin— dungy gods from the shape of the 
ordure, literally thin clods or balls, or that which can be rolled about. — A, G.") 

JTlagolteotl, la deese de I'ordure, ou Tlagolquani, la mangeuse d'ordure, parcequ'elle presidait 
aux amours et aux plaisirs lubriques. — (Brasseur de Bourbourg, introduction to Landa, French 
edition, Paris, 1864, p. 87.) 

§El dios de los vicios y suciedades que ledecian Tlazulteotl.— (Mendieta, in Icazbalceta, Mexico, 
1870, vol. 1, p. 81.) 



38 URINE DANCES AND UE- ORGIES. 

calendar. She was described as " the one who sinned by eating the fruit 
of the tree." The Spanish monks styled her, as well as another goddess, 
Tlagolteotl — '^La diosa de basura 6 pecado." But ''basura" is not 
the alternative of sin (pecado); it means ''dung, manure, ordure, excre- 
ment."* It is possible that, in their zeal to discover analogies between 
the Aztec and Christian religions, the early missionaries passed over a 
number of points now left to conjecture. 

In the same volume of Kingsborough, p. 136, there is an allusion to 
the offerings or sacrifices made Tepeololtec, " que, en romance, quiere decir 
sacrificios de mierda," which, ''in plain language, signifies sacrifices of 
excrement." Nothing further can be adduced upon the subject, although 
a note at the foot of this page, in Kingsborough, says that here several 
pages of the Codex Telleriano had been obliterated or mutilated, probably 
by some over-zealous expurgator. 

Knowing of the existence of " dung gods " among Romans, Egyptians, 
Hebrews, and Moabites, it is not unreasonable to insist, in the present 
case, upon a rigid adherence to the text, and to assert that, where it 
speaks of a sacrifice as a sacrifice of excrement and designates a deity as 
an eater of excrement, it means what it says, and should not be distorted, 
under the plea of symbolism, into a perversion of facts and ideas. 

THE USE OF THE LINGAM IN INDIA. 

Such a symbolism is to be detected in the use of the lingam in the 
East Indies, and it is a symbolism strikingly adapted to the intent of 
this article. In describing the sacrifice called Poojah, Maurice relates 
that — 

The Abichegam makes a part of the Pooja. This ceremony consists in pouring milk 
upon the lingam. This liquor is afterward kept with great care, and some drops are 
given to dying people that they may merit the delights of the Calaison.t 

Again, he speaks of the salagram, a stone which is to the Vishnuite 
what the lingam is to the Seevites : 

Happy are those favored devotees who can quaff the sanctified water in which either 
has been bathed. | 

Dulaure describes the rites of the Cachi-couris, in which the sacred 
water of the Ganges is first poured upon the lingam ; after flowing upon 

* According to Neumann and Baretti's Velasquez, while, according to the dictionary of the 
Spanish Academy, the meaning is "the dirt and dust collected in sweeping— the sweepings and 
dung of stables." 

t Maurice, " Indian Antiquities," London, 1800, vol. 5, p. 179. 

X Idem, p. 146. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 39 

the lingam, it is carefully preserved and dealt out in drops to the faith- 
ful. It is of special service in soothing the last hours of the dying.* 

The lingam is the phallic symbol. The water or milk sanctified by it 
may represent a former employment of urine, such, as will soon be shown, 
prevailed all over Europe. This use of lingam water is perhaps analo- 
gous to that of mistletoe water, previously noted. 

URINE AND ORDURE AS SIGNS OF MOURNING. 

Care should be taken to distinguish between the religious use of ordure 
and urine and that in which they figure as outward signs of mourning, 
induced by a frenzy of grief, or where they have been utilized in the arts. 

Lord Kingsborough (Mexican Antiquities, vol. 8, p. 237) briefly out- 
lines such ritualistic defilement in the Mortuary Ceremonies of Hebrews 
and Aztecs, giving as references for the latter Diego Duran, and for the 
former the prophet Zechariah, chap, iii : ''Now Joshua was clothed with 
filthy garments and stood before the angel," &c. 

URINE AND ORDURE IN INDUSTRIES. 

By the Eskimo urine is preserved for use in tanning skins, f while its 
employment in the preparation of leather in both Europe and America 
is too well understood to require any reference to authorities. 

The Kioways of the Great Plains soaked their bufiklo hides in urine 
to make them soft and flexible. J 

Bernal Diaz, in his enumeration of the articles for sale in the " ti- 
anguez" or market-places of Tenochtitlan, uses this expression: 

I must also mention human excrements which were exposed for sale in canoes lying in 
the canals near this square, which is used for the tanning of leather ; for, according to the 
assurances of the Mexicans, it is impossible to tan well without it. — (Bernal Diaz, ''Con- 
quest of Mexico," London, 1844, vol. 1, p. 236.) 

The same use of ordure in tanning bear-skins can be found among the 
nomadic Apaches of Arizona, although, preferentially, they use the ordure 
of the animal itself. 



* Verser quelques gouttes sur la t^te et dans la bouche des agonisants.— (Dulaure, "Des Divini- 
tes Generatrices." Paris, 1825, pp. 105, 106, 111.) 

t They also keep urine in tubs in their huts for use in dressing deer and seal skins. (Hans Egede ; 
also quoted in Richardson, " Polar Regions," Edinburgh, 1861, p. 304. ) The same custom has been 
noted in Alaska. The same thing mentioned by Egede's grand nephew, Hans Egede Saabye, 
"Greenland," London, 1816, p. 6. 

+ The whole process was carefully observed by Captain Robert G. Carter, 4th Cavalry, U. S. Army. 



40 URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 

Gomara, who also tabulated the articles sold in the Mexican markets, 

does not mention ordure in direct terms ; his words are more vague : 

All these things which I speak of, with many that I do not know and others about which 
I keep silent, are sold in this market of the Mexicans.* 

Urine figures as the mordant for fixing the colors of blankets and other 
woolen fabrics woven by the Navajoes of New Mexico, by the Mokis of 
Arizona, by the Zunis and other Pueblos of the Southwest, by the Arau- 
canians of Chile, by Mexicans, Peruvians, by some of the tribes of Af- 
ghanistan, and other nations ; by all of whom it is carefully preserved. 

In the interior of China, travelers relate that copper receptacles along 
the roadsides rescue from loss a fertilizer whose value is fully recognized. 

In Germany and France, during the past century, farmers and gar- 
deners were generally careful of this fertilizer. 

'^In the valley of Ouzco, Peru, and, indeed, in almost all parts of the 
Sierra, they used human manure for the maize crops, because they said 
it was the best." (Garcillasso de la Vega, '^ Comentarios Eeales," Clem- 
ent C. Markham's Translation, in Hakluyt Society, vol. 45, p. 11.) 

Animal manure was known as a fertilizer to the Jews. (2 Kings, ix : 
37. Jeremiah, viii: 2; ix: 22; xvi: 4; xxv: 33.) 

Human manure also. (Consult McClintock and Strong's Encyclopaedia, 
article, ''Dung.") 

Urine has also been employed as a detergent in scouring wool. (See 
Encyclopsedia Britannica, article, '' Bleaching.") 

Diderot and D'Alembert say that the sal ammoniac of the ancients 
was prepared with the urine of camels; that phosphorus, as then manu- 
factured in England, was made with human urine, as was also saltpeter. 
(Encyclopaedia, Geneva, 1789, article ''Urine.") 

Sal ammoniac derives its name from having been first made in the 
vicinity of the temple of Jupiter Ammon ; it would be of consequence 
to us to know whether or not the priests of that temple had administered 
urine in disease before they learned how to extract from it the medicinal 
salt which has come down to our own times. 

The employment of different manures as fuel for firing pottery among 
Mokis, Zunis, and other Pueblos, and for general heating in Thibet, has 
been pointed out by the author in a former work. (Snake Dance of the 
Mokis, London, 1884 ; New York, 1884.) It was used for the same 

* Todo estas cosas que digo y muchas que no s6 y otraa quo callo, so venden en este meroado des- 
tos de Mejico. — (G6mara, " Historia de la Conquista de Mejico," p. 349.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 41 

purpose in Africa, according to Mungo Park. (Travels, &c., p. 119.) 
The dung of the buffalo served the same purpose in the domestic economy 
of the Plains Indians. Camel dung is the fuel of the Bedouins ; that of 
men and animals alike was saved and dried by the Syrians, Arabians, 
Egyptians, and people of West of England for fuel. Egyptians heated 
their lime-kilns with it. (McOlintock and Strong, ''Dung." See, also, 
Kitto's Biblical Encyclopaedia, article ''Dung.") 

For shampooing the hair, it was the favorite medium among the 
Eskimo.* 

Sahagun gives, in detail, the formula of the preparation applied by the 
Mexicans for the eradication of dandruff : 

Cut the hair close to root, wash head well with urine, and afterward take amole (soap- 
weed) and coixochitl leaves — the amole is the wormwood of this country [in this Saha- 
gun is mistaken] — and then the kernels of aguacate ground up and mixed with the ashes 
already spoken of (wood ashes from the fire-place), and then rub on black mud with a 
quantity of the bark mentioned [mesquite].! 

A similar method of dressing the hair, but without urine, prevails 
among the Indians along the Bio Colorado and in Sonora, Mexico. First, 
an application is made of a mixture of river mud ("blue mud," as it is 
called in Arizona) and pounded mesquite bark. After three days this is 
removed, and the hair thoroughly washed with water in which the 
saponaceous roots of the the amole have been steeped. The hair is dyed 
a rich blue-black, and remains soft, smooth, and glossy. 

In the examples just given, as well as in a few to follow, where urine 
is applied in bodily ablutions, the object sought is undoubtedly the pro- 
curing of ammonia by oxidation ; to none of these can any association of 
religious ideas be ascribed. Such will not be the case, however, where 
the ablutions are attended with ceremonial observances, are incorporated 
in a ritual, or take place in chambers reserved for sacred purposes. 
No difficulty is experienced in assigning to their proper categories the 
urinal ablutions of the Eskimo of Greenland, J of Alaska, § of the north- 
west coast of America, 1 1 of the Indians of Cape Flattery, If of the people 

*See Graah, " Greenland," London, 1837, p. HI, and Hans Egede Saabye, *' Greenland," London, 
1818, p. 256. 

t Contra la caspa serd, necesario cortar muy ^ raiz los cabellos y lavarse la cabeza con orines y 
despues tomar las hojas de ciertas yerbas que en indio se llaman coioxochitl y amoUi 6 iztahuatl 
que es el agenjo de esta tierra, y con el cuesco del aguacate molido y mezclado con el cisco que 
estd dicho arriba; y sobre esto se ha de poner, el barro negro que estd referido, con cantidad de la 
corteza de lo dicho. — (Sahagun, in Kingsborough, vol. 7, p. 294.) 

I Hans Egede Saabye, p. 256. 

gSabytchew's Travels, in Phillips' Voyages, vol. 6, London, 1807. 

B Whymper's Alaska, London, 1868, p. 142. Bancroft, H. H. Native Races Pacific Slope, vol. 1, 
p. 83. 

IF Swan, in Smithsonian Contributions, 1869, No. 220. 



4:2 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

of Iceland,* and of the savages of Lower California, f or of the Celti- 
berii of Spain. 

Although they boasted of cleanliness, both in their nourishment and in their dress, it 
was not unusual for them to wash their teeth and bodies in urine — a custom which they 
considered favorable to health. — (Maltebrun, Universal Geography, article, "Spain," 
vol. 5, book 137, p. 357, American edition, Philadelphia, 1832.) 

This usage has been transmitted with some modification to the peas- 
antry of Portugal, who are, partially at least, Celtiberian in blood. In 
some sections of Portugal, as is shown by Ivan PetroflF, they wash their 
clothes in urine. % 

URINE IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES. 

But in the examples adduced from Whymper concerning the people of 
the village of Unlacheet, on Norton Sound, ''the dancers of the Male- 
mutes of Norton Sound bathed themselves in urine." § Although, on 
another page, Whymper says that this was for want of soap, doubt may, 
with some reason, be entertained. Bathing is a frequent accompaniment, 
an integral part of the religious ceremonial among all the Indians of 
America, and no doubt among the Inuit or Eskimo as well ; when this 
is performed by dancers, there is further reason to examine carefully for 
a religious complication, and especially if these dances be celebrated in 
sacred places, as Petroff relates they are. 

They never bathe or wash their bodies, but on certain occasions the men light a fire in 
the kashima, strip themselves, and dance and jump around until in a profuse perspira- 
tion. They then apply urine to their oily bodies and rub themselves, until a lather ap- 
pears, after which they plunge into the river. || 

In each village of the Kuskutchewak (of Alaska) there is a public building named the 
kashim, in which councils are held and festivals kept, and which must be large enough 

*" People of Iceland were reported to wash their hands and their faces in pisse." (Hakluyt, 
Voyages, vol. 1, p. 664.) This report, however, was indignantly denied of all but the common 
people, by Arugrianus Jonas, an Icelandic writer. 

tPericuis of Lower California, "Mothers, to protect them against the weather, cover the entire 
bodies of their children with a varnish of coal and urine."— (Bancroft, idem, vol. 1, p. 559.) 

Clavigero not only tells all that Bancroft does, but he adds that the women of California washed 
their own faces in urine.— (Historia de Baja California, Mexico, 1852, p. 28.) 

tlvan Petroff in " Transactions American Anthropological Society," vol. 1, 1882. 

Clavigero quotes Diodorus Siculus to the effect that the Celtiberians bathed in urine and 
cleaned their teeth with it. " Urina totum corpus perluunt, adeoque denies etiam fricant."— (,Diod. 
Siculus, lib. 5, in Clavigero, Historia de Baja California, Mexico, 1852, p. 28.) 

Diderot and D'Alembert assert unequivocally that in the later years of the last century the 
people of the Spanish Peninsula still used urine as a dentifrice. 

Les Espagnols font grand usage de I'urine pour se nettoyer les dents. Les anoiens Celtib6riens 
aisoient la m6me chose.— (Encyclopaedia, Geneva, 1789, article " Urine.") 

SWhymper's "Alaska," London, 1868, pp. 142, 152. 

ilvan Petroff in "Transactions American Anthropological Society," vol. 1, 1882. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 43 

to contain all the grown men of the village. It has raised platforms around the walls 
and a place in the center for a fire, with an aperture in the roof for the admission of 
light. — (Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, London, 1851, p. 365.) 

These kashima are identical with the estufas of Zunis, Moquis, and 
Eio Grande Pueblos. Whymper himself describes them thus : 

These buildings may be regarded as the natives' town hall ; orations are made, festivals 
and feasts are held in them. 

No room is left for doubt after reading the fuller description of these 
Kashima, contained in Bancroft. He says that the Eskimo dance in 
them, "often in puris naturalibus," and make "burlesque imitations of 
birds and beasts." Dog or wolf tails hang to the rear of their garments. 
A sacred feast of fish and berries accompanies these dances, wherein the 
actors "elevate the provisions successively to the four cardinal points 
and once to the skies above, when all partake of the feast."* 

ORDUKE IN SMOKING. 

Among all the observances of the every-day life of the American 
aborigines, none is so distinctly complicated with the religious idea as 
smoking; therefore, should the use of excrement, human or animal, be 
detected in this connection, full play should be given to the suspicion 
that a hidden meaning attaches to the ceremony. This would appear to 
be the view entertained by the indefatigable missionary, De Smet, who 
records such a custom among the Flatheads and Crows in 1846 : 

To render the odor of the' pacific incense agreeable to their gods it is necessary that 
the tobacco and the herb (skwiltz), the usual ingredients, should be mixed with a small 
quantity of bufialo dung.t 

The Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others of the plains tribes, to 
whom the bufialo is a god, have the same or an almost similar custom. 

* Bancroft, H. H. Native Races Pacific Slope, vol. 1, p. 75. 

tFather De Smet, "Oregon Missions," New York, 1847, p. 383. 

The Peruvians had one class of "wizards" (*'• e., medicine men), who "told fortunes by maize 
and the dung of sheep." (Fables and Rites of the Yncas, Padre Cristoval de Molina, translated 
by Clement C. Markham, Hakluyt Society Transactions, London, 1873, vol. 48, p. 14.) Molina 
resided in Cuzco, as a missionary, from 1570 to 1584. 

Les Hachus (a division of the Peruvian priesthood), consultaient I'avenir au moyen de grains de 
mais ou des excrements des animaux. — (Balboa,- Histoire de Perou, p. 29, in Ternaux, vol. 15.) 

See, also, D. G. Brinton's "Myths of the New World." New York, 1868, pp. 278, 279. 

Ducange, enumerating the pagan superstitions which still survived in Europe in A. D. 743, men- 
tions divination or augury by the dung of horses, cattle, or birds. 

Del auguriis vel avium, vel equorum, vel bourn stercoracibus.— (Ducange, Glossary, article 
" Stercoraces.") 



44 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

ORDURE AND URINE IN MEDICINE. 

The administration of urine as a curative opens the .door to a flood of 
thought. Medicine, both in theory and practice, even among nations of 
the highest development and refinement, has not, until within the present 
century, cleared its skirts of the superstitious hand-prints of the dark 
ages. With tribes of a lower degree of culture it is still subordinate to 
the incantations and exorcisms of the ''medicine man." It might not 
be going a step too far to assert that the science of therapeutics, pure 
and simple, has not yet taken form among savages; but to shorten dis- 
cussion and avoid controversy, it will be assumed here that such a 
science does exist, but in an extremely rude and embryotic state ; and to 
this can be referred all examples of the introduction of urine or ordure 
in the materia medica, where the aid of the ''medicine man" does not 
seem to have been invoked, as in the method employed for the eradica- 
tion of dandrufi" by Mexicans, Eskimo, and others, the Celtiberian den- 
trifice, &c.* 

The Indians of California gave urine to newly-born children. "At time 
of childbirth many singular observances obtained ; for instance, the old 
women washed the child as soon as it was born and drank of the water ; 
the unhappy infant was forced to take a draught of urine, medicinally, "f 

So in Peru, "when sucking infants were taken ill, especially if their 
ailment was of a feverish nature, they washed them in urine in the morn- 
ings, and when they could get some of the urine of the child they gave 
it a drink."! 

Ignorant people in both Europe and America have been accused of 
nearly identical vagaries in domestic medicine. 

Along the Isthmus of Darien the belief was prevalent among the 
aborigines that the most efficacious remedy for poisoned arrows was that 
which required the wounded man to swallow pills of his own excrement. § 

Padre Inamma, whose interesting researches upon rattlesnake bites 
and their remedies (made in Lower California, some time before the ex- 

*Mungo Park states that he saw it applied as a poultice for suppurating abscesses among Mnn- 
'lingoes. (Travels in Africa, New York, &c., p. 203.) The author has seen it plastered upon bee- 
-tings, with a soothing effect, in New Jersey. 

t Bancroft, II. II. Native Races, vol. 1, p. 413. 

X Gtircilasso de la Vega. Comentarios Ileales, Markham's Translation, Hakluyt Society, vol. 41, 
p. 180. 

§ Decian que era el antidoto de esta pon^ona ol Fuego i el agua del mar, la dicta y continoncia. 
Y otra dicen que la hez del herido tomada en pildoras o en otra forma. (.Ilerrcni, Decades, 2, 
lib. 1, pp. 3, 0, 10.) They used to say that the antidotes for this i)oison were fire, sea-water, fasting, 
and continence. Another of which they speak was the excrement of the wounded man taken in 
tnrm of pill or otherwise. 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 45 

pulsion of the Jesuits^ in 1767) are published in Clavigero,* says that 
the most usual and most efficacious antidote was human ordure, fresh 
and dissolved in water, drunk by the person bitten. 

Analogous medicaments may be hinted at in Smith's account of the 
Aracuanians of Chile : 

Their remedies are principally, if not entirely, vegetable matter, though they admin- 
ister many disgusting compounds of animal matter, which they pretend are endowed with 
miraculous powers. — (Smith, Araucanians, New York, 1855, p. 234.) 

. Brand enumerates obsolete recipes, one of which (disease not men- 
tioned) directed the patient to take '^ five spoonfuls of knave child urine 
of an innocent." t 

The Siberians gave human urine to their reindeer : 

Nothing is so acceptable to a reindeer as human urine, and I have even seen them run 
to get it as occasion offered. — (John Dundas Cochrane, Pedestrian Journey Through 
Siberian Tartary, 1820-23, Philadelphia, 1824, p. 235.) 

Here the intent was evident ; the animals needed salt, and no other 
method of obtaining it was feasible during the winter months. Cochrane 
is speaking of the Tchuktchi, but he was also among Yakuts and other 
tribes. He walked from Saint Petersburgh to Kamtschatka and from 
point to point in Siberia for a total distance of over six thousand miles. 
His pages are dark with censure of the filthy and disgusting habits of 
the savage nomads, as, of the Yakuts, ^Hlieir stench and filth are incon- 
ceivable." ''The large tents (of the Tchuktchi) were disgustingly dirt}" 
and offensive, exhibiting every species of grossness and indelicacy." In- 
side the tents men, women, and girls were absolutely naked. ''They 
drink only snow-water during the winter, to melt which, when no wood 
can be had, very disgusting and dirty means are. resorted to," &c. But 
nowhere does he speak of the drinking of human urine, which, as has 
been learned from other sources, does obtain among them. 

Thus far, the citations have not specifically mentioned the association 
of occult influence with human excreta, but those to follow impute, 
without vagueness or ambiguity, a mysterious and inexplicable potency 
to both urine and ordure. 



* El reraedio mas usual y eficaz es el de la triaea huraana, asi llamada, para mayor decencia, el 
excremcnto huraano, fresco y disuelto en aqua que hacen beber al mordido.— (Clavigero, Ilistoria 
de la Bnja California, Mexico, 1852.) 

t Brand, Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 3, p. 282. 



46 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES, 

OCCULT INFLUENCES ASCRIBED TO ORDURE AND URINE. 

In Canada, human urine was drunk as a medicine. Father Sagard 
witnessed a dance of the Hurons in which the young men, women, and 
girls danced naked around a sick woman, into whose mouth one of the 
young iften urinated, she swallowing the disgusting draught in the hope 
of being cured.* 

By the French, it was considered a certain cure for fever. Such an 
amount of superstition attached to the panacea that the prescription may 
well be given in full : 

Knead a small loaf with urine voided in the worst stage of his fever by a person hav- 
ing the quaternary ague. Bake the loaf, let it cool, and give it to be eaten by another 
person. Repeat the same during three different attacks, and the fever will leave the 
patient and go to the person who has eaten the bread. 

Another one runs in these terms ; 

Take an egg, boil it hard, and break off the shell. Prick the egg in different places 
with a needle, steep it in the urine of a person afflicted with fever, and then give it to a 
man (if the patient be a man), to a woman (if a woman), and the recipient will acquire the 
fever, which will abandon the patient, f 

This remedy Thiers traces back to the Eomans, quoting from Horace 
in support of his assertion. 

The second recipe finds its parallel in the '' Chinook olives," described 
in the first pages of this monograph. 

English women, in some localities, drank the urine of their husbands 
to assist them in the hour of labor. J 

* II se fit un jour une d<ance de tous les jeunes hommes, femmes et filles toutes nues, eu In presence 
d'une malade, ^ la quelle 11 fallut (traict que je no s^ay commen excuser ou passer sous silence), 
qu'un dc ces jeunes hommes luy pissast dans la bouche et qu'elle auallast et beust cette eau. ce 
qu'elle fit avec un grand courage, esperant en receuoir guerison.— (Sagard, Histoire du Canada, 
edition of Paris, 1885, p. 107.) 

tPt'trir un petit pain avec I'urine qu'une personne malade de la ficvre quarte aura rendue dans 
le fort de son acces, le fiiire cuire, le laisser froidir, le donner ^ manger^ un * * * et fairc trois 
fois la m6me chose pendant trois aeces, le * * * prendra la fi6vrc quarte et ellequittcra la per- 
sonne malade. 

Faire durcir un oeuf, le peler, le piquer de divers coups d'aiguillc, le tremper dans Turine d'une 
personne qui a la fievre * * * puis Ic donner S, un * * * si le malade est un male ou a une 
* * * si le malade est une femelle et la fiSvre s'en ira.— (Thiers, Trait6 des Superstitions, Paris, 
1745, vol. 1, lib. 5. cap. 4, p. 386. Copied in Picart, Costumes et C6r6monies, &c., Amsterdam, 1729, 
vol. 10, p. 80.) 

t."In the collection entitled Sylon, or the Wood, p. 130. we read that * a few years ago, in this same 
village, the women in labor used to drinkc the urine of their husbands, who were all the while 
stationed, as I have seen the cows in St. James' Park, straining themselves to give as much as they 
can.'"— (Brand, Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 3, article, "Lady in the Straw.") 



URINE DANCE 8 AND UE- ORGIES. 47 

By the Irish peasantry, it was sprinkled upon sick children.* 
American boys urinate upon their legs to prevent cramp while swim- 
ming. 

By the Hottentot priests, it is said to have been sprinkled upon newly- 
married couples, t 

FEARFUL EITE OF THE HOTTENTOTS. 

A religious rite of still more fearful import occurs among the same 
people at the initiation of their young men into the rank of warriors — a 
ceremony which must be deferred until the postulant has attained his 
eighth or ninth year. It consists, principally, in depriving him of the 
left iesticle, after which the medicine man voids his urine upon him. J 

With equal solicitude does the Hottentot medicine man follow the re- 
mains of his kinsmen to the grave, aspersing with the same sacred liquid 
the corpse of the dead and the persons of the mourners who bewail his 
loss.§ 

The French attributed to it other virtues beyond its efficacy as a feb- 



rifuge. 



URINE USED TO DEFEAT WITCHCRAFT. 



It was in requisition to ward off the machinations of witches. In the 
valuable compilation of superstitious practices interdicted by Eoman 
Catholic councils Thiers includes the persons who bathe their hands with 
urine in the morning to avert witchcraft or nullify its effect. He says, 

* Brand quotes Camden, as relating of the Irish, that " if a child is at any time out of order, they 
sprinkle it with the stalest urine they can get." — (Brand, Popular Antiquities, article " Christen- 
ing Customs," London, 1849, vol. 2, p. 86.) 

After the first portion of this monograph had gone to press, the author was fortunate in obtain- 
ing a copy of the recently published address of Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
Washington, D. C, upon the " Medical Mythology of Ireland." 

This interesting and extremely valuable contribution, which can be found in the Transactions 
of the American Philosophical Society for 1887, leaves no uncertainty in regard to the mystic 
powers ascribed by the Celtic peasantry to both urine and ordure. Urine and chicken dung are 
shown to be potent in frustrating the mischief of fairies ; " fire, iron, and dung " are spoken of as 
the " three great safeguards against the influence of fairies and the infernal spirits." Dung is 
carried about the person, as part of the contents of amulets; and children suff"ering from convul- 
sions are, as a last resort, bathed from head to foot in urine, to rescue them from the clutches of 
their fairy persecutors. 

t Mungo Park's Travels in Africa, New York, 1813, p. 109; also previous citation. 

+ See in Picart, Co<ltumes et Ceremonies R61igieuses, etc.. Religion des Africains, Amsterdam, 
1729, vol. 7, p. 47.) 

§ Picart, Cofitumes et C6r6monies Religieuses, etc., Amsterdam, 1729, vol. 7, pp. 52, 57. 



48 URINE DANCES AND UE- ORGIES. 

too, that Saint Lucy was reputed to be a witch, for which reason the 
Eoman judge, Paschasius, at her trial sprinkled her with urine.* 

There is on record the confession of a young French witch, Jeanne 
Bosdean, at Bordeaux, 1594, wherein is described a witches' mass, at 
which the devil appeared in the disguise of a black buck, with a candle 
between his horns. When holy water was needed, the buck urinated in 
a hole in the ground, and the officiating witch aspersed it upon the con- 
gregation with a black sprinkler. Jeanne Bosdean adhered to her story 
even when in the flames. f 

Leaving the continent and crossing the channel, the same queer usages, 
based upon the same ideas, are to be discovered. In England " it was a 
supposed remedy against witchcraft to put some of the bewitched per- 
son's water, with a quantity of pins, needles, and nails, into a bottle, 
cork them up, and set them before the fire, in order to confine the spirit. "| 

At the trials of witches one of the usual tests was ''the burning of 
the dung or urine of such as are bewitched." J 

For the detection of witches, '^ a handful of thatch from over the door, 
or a tile, if it be tiled," was taken from the suspected witch's house; " if 
it be thatch, you must wet and sprinkle it over with the patient's water, 
and likewise with salt." I 

There are several tests and remedies of the same general nature. It 
is believed that the foregoing will suffice. Brand says that the one last 
given was in vogue in Somersetshire as late as 1730. 

" Pennant tells us that the Highlanders on New Year's Day burn juni- 
per before their cattle, and on the first Monday in every quarter sprinkle 
them with urine. § 

"Casting urine" is mentioned among the list of ''superstitious prac- 
tices preserved in the life and character of Harvey, the famous conjurer 
of Dublin, 1728." II 

* Ceux qui lavent leurs mains le matin avec de I'urine pour dctourner les malefices ou pour en 
empecher I'effet. C'est pour cela que le juge Paschase fit arroser d'urine Sainte Luce, parce qu'il 
s'imaginoit qu'elle ctoit sorciere.— (Thiers, Traito des Superstitions, Paris, 1741, vol. 1, cap. 5, p. 
171.) 

Xliis statement is repeated verbatim by Picart (Cofltumes et C6r6monies, etc.. Amsterdam, 1729, 
vol. 10, p. ;i5), and he adds, that the judge believed that he would by this precaution disable her 
from evading the torments in store for her. John of Saulsbury, bishop of Chartres, with good 
reason cast ridicule upon this charm. 

t Pour faire de I'eau fenite, le Bouc pissoit dans un trou a terre et celui qui faisoit I'office en 
arrosoit les assistans avec un aspergc noir. — (Thiers, Superstitions, etc., vol. 2, book 4, cap. 1, p. 
'.i67. See the same story in Picart, vol. 8, p. 69.) 

+ Brand's Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 3, pp. 13. 24, 25, 35. 

g Brand, Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 1. p. 13, 

I Brand, vol. 3, p. 17Q, 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 49 

'^Ostanes, the magician, prescribed the dipping of our feet, in the 
morning, in human urine as a preventative against charms."* 

The malevolence of witchcraft seems to have taken its greatest pleasure 
in subtle assaults upon those just entering the married state. Fortunately, 
amulets, talismans, and counter charms were within reach of all who 
needed them ; one of those only will be given — urination through the 
wedding ring, f 

The Romans had a feast to the mother of all the gods, Berecinthia, in 
which the matrons took her idol and sprinkled it with their urine. J 

Berecinthia was one of the names under which Cybele or Rhea, the 
primal earth goddess, was worshiped by the Romans and by many nations 
in the East. Her priests, the Galli, emasculated themselves in orgies 
whose frenzy was of the same general type as the Omophagi of the Greeks, 
previously described. 

It is strange to encounter in races so diverse apparently as the Greeks 
and the Hottentots the same rites of emasculation and urine sprinkling. 

Father Le Jeune must have been on the track of something corre- 
sponding to an ur-orgie among the Hurons when he learned that the 
devil imposed upon the sick, in dreams, the duty of wallowing in ordure 
if they hoped for restoration to health. § 

The following is described as the Abyssinian method of exorcising a 
woman: The exorcist ^'lays an amulet on the patient's heaving bosom, 
makes her smell of some vile compound, and the moment her madness is 
somewhat abated begins a dialogue with the Bouda (demon), who answers 
in a woman's voice. The devil is invited to come out in the name of all 
the saints, but a threat to treat him with some red hot coals is usually 
more potent, and after he has promised to obey, he seeks to delay his 
exit by asking for something to eat. Filth and dirt are mixed and hid- 
den" under a bush, when the woman crawls to the sickening repast and 
gulps it down with avidity." (From an article entitled '^ Abyssinian 
Women," in the ''Evening Star," Washington, D. C, October 17, 1885.) 

ORDURE IN LOVE-PHILTERS. 

Love-sick maidens in France stand accused of making as a philter a 
cake, into whose composition entered "nameless ingredients," which con- 

* Brand, vol.3, p. 2S6. 

t * * * through the wedding ring.— (Brand, vol. 3, p. 305.) 

tLa rociaba con sus orines.— (Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, lib. x, chap, xxiii.) 

§Lcur faisant voir en songe, qu'ils ne s^auroient guerir qu'en se veautant dans toutes sortes 

d'ordures.— (Pere Le Jeune, Jesuit Relations, 1636. Published by Canadian Government, Quebec. 

1858.) 



50 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

fection being eaten by the refractory lover, soon caused a revival of his 
waning affections.* This was considered to savor so strongly of witch- 
craft that it was interdicted by councils. 

The witches and wizards of the Apache tribe make a confection or 
philter one of the ingredients of which is generally human ordure, as 
the author learned from some of them a few years since. The Navajoes, 
of same blood and language as the Apaches, employ the dung of cows 
(as related in the ''Snake Dance of the Mokis," p. 75). 

This recapitulation of urinal aspersions, ablutions, &c., is sufficient to 
expose the very widespread dissemination of the rite, which in the case 
of the European races at least may be referred to an origin in India in 
the earliest ages of the human family. The resemblances cannot safely be 
explained away as accidental ; the Aryan tribes, in their migrations from 
the far East, took with them languages, religious rites and ceremonies, and 
social usages whose counterpart, slightly altered or distorted perhaps in 
transmission, may be stumbled upon among distantly related brethren in 
the former habitat. 

The love-philter described in the preceding paragraph recalls a some- 
what analogous practice among the Manicheans, whose eucharistic bread 
was incorporated or sprinkled with human semen, possibly with the 
idea that the bread of life should be strengthened by the life-giving ex- 
cretion, f 

The Albigenses, or Catharistes, their descendants, are alleged to have 
degenerated into or to have preserved the same vile superstition. J 

Understanding that these allegations proceed from hostile sources, 
their insertion in this category has been permitted only upon the theory 
that as the Manichean ethics and ritual present resemblances to both the 

*"Le mal6fice amoureux ou le philtre" is defined as follows: "Telle est la pratique de certaines 
femmes et de certaines filles qui, pour obliger leurs galans * * * de les aimer comme auparavaut 
* * * les font manger du gateau oii elles ont mis des ordures que je ne veux pas nommer." — 
(Jean Baptiste Thiers, Traite des Superstitions," Paris, 1741, p. 150.) 

tQu&, occasione vel potius execrabilis superstitionis quadam necessitate coguntur electi eorum 
velut eucharistiam conspersam cum semine humano sum ere. — (Saint Augustine, quoted by Bayle, 
Philosophical Dictionary, English edition, London, 1737, article "Manicheans.") 

JLes Catharistes qui ctoient une espece choisis de Manich^ens, p6trissoient le pain Eucharistique 
avec la semence humaine.— (Thiers, Superstitions, <tc., Paris, 1741, vol.2, lib. 2, chap. 1, p. 216; 
and Picart, Contflmes et Ceremonies, &c., Amsterdam, 1729, vol. 8, p. 79.) 

E. B. Tylor says that "about A. D. 7(X) John of Osun, patriarch of Armenia, wrote a diatribe 
against the sect of Paulicians" (who were believed to be the descendants of the Manicheans, and 
in turn to have transmitted their doctrines to the Albigenses). In the course of the diatribe the 
patriarch declares that "they mix wheaten flour with the blood of infants and therewith cele- 
brate their communion."— (E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, London, 1871, vol. 1, p. 69.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 51 

Parsee and Buddhist religions (from which they may to some extent have 
originated), there is reason for supposing that ritualistic ablutions, asper- 
sions, and other practices analogous to those of the great sect farther to 
the East, may have been transmitted to the younger religion in Europe.* 

BURLESQUE SURVIVALS. 

A new task now presents itself — the examination into burlesque sur- 
vivals of rites and usages no longer countenanced as matters of religious 
importance. 

The Hindu festival of Holi, Hull, or Hulica, familiar to most readers, 
has thus been outlined by a recent witness as celebrated in the provinces 
near Oudeypore.f The proceedings are characterized as a saturnalia, at- 
tended with much freedom and excessive drunkenness : 

From the very beginning, effigies of the most revolting indecency are set up in the 
gates of the town and in the principal thoroughfares. 

Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the 
streets, carrying sacks full of a bright red vegetable powder. With this they assail the 
passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling 
color. Groups of people stationed at the windows retaliate with the same projectile, or 
squirt with wooden syringes red and yelloio streams of water into the streets below. 

The ISTautch dances reach the acme of voluptuousness, and the accom- 
panying chants are filled with suggestiveness. The author here quoted 
says that Holica was the Indian Venus. 

An eminent authority says that — 

This red powder (gulal) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous character. During 
the holi holidays the Maharaj throws gulal on the breasts of female and male devotees, 
and directs the current of some water of a yellow color from a syringe upon the breasts 
of females, t 

This " yellow water " may be a survival of and a refinement upon 
urine. The Apaches and Navajoes, close neighbors of the Zunis, have 
had, until very recently (and may still celebrate), the Dance of the Josh- 
kan, in which clowns scatter upon the spectators, from bladders wound 
round their bodies, water, said to be representative of urine. 

*Manicheans bathed in urine. — (Picart, Cofitumes, &c., Dissertation sur les Perses, p. 38.) 

t See in Rousselet's " India." London, 1876, pp. 173, 343. It has been identified as our April Fool's 
Day, See in "Asiatic Researches," Calcutta, 1790, vol, 2, p. 334 ; also, in Moor's " Hindu Pantheon," 
London, 1810, pp. 156, 157; also, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Appleton's Encyclopaedia, ar- 
ticle "April." 

On the Sunday and Monday preceding Lent people are privileged at Lisbon to play the fool ; it 
is thought very jocose to pour water on any person who passes or throw powder in his face; but to 
do both is the perfection of wit.— (Southey, quoted in Hone's Every Day Book, vol. 1, p. 206, Lon- 
don, 1825. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, London, 1849, vol. 1, p. 131, article "April Fool's 
Day.") 

X Inman, Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, p. 393. 



52 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

Among the Aztecs there was a festival allowing the fullest license to 
clowns, armed with bladders, filled with red powder or fine pieces of ma- 
guey paper, attached by strings to short poles. With these bladders 
all persons caught in the streets, especially women and girls, were merci- 
lessly buffeted. (Sahagun, vol. 2, in Kingsborough's Mexican Antiqui- 
ties, vol. 6, p. 33, and again, vol. 7, p. 83.) 

His account says that in the seventeenth month, which was called Tititl, 
and corresponded almost to our winter solstice, the Mexican year being 
divided into eighteen months, of twenty days each, beginning with our 
February, the Aztec populace played a game called ''nechichiquavilo." 

All the men and boys who wished to play this game made little bags 
or nets, filled with the pollen of the rush, called espadaiia, or with paper 
cut in fine pieces. These were attached to cords or ribbons half a yard 
long, in such a manner that a blow could be struck with them. Others 
made these bags like gloves, which they stuffed as above stated, or with 
leaves of green maize. No one was allowed, under penalty, to put into 
these bags any stones, or anything else which could hurt. 

The boys at once began to play this game, in the way of a sham-battle, 
hitting each other on the head, or wherever else they could. As the fun 
increased, the more mischievous of the boys began to beat the young 
maidens passing along the street ; at times, three or four young boys 
would attack one girl, and beat her so hard as to weary her and make 
her cry. The more prudent of the young girls, in going from point to 
point, carried a club with which to defend themselves. Some of the boys 
concealed the bag, and when any old women carelessly approached, 
they would suddenly begin to beat them., crying out '' Chichiquatzinte 
mantze," which means ''Our mother, this is the bag of the game." * 

* Pani este juego, todos los hombres y muchachos que querian jugar hacian taleguillas 6 redecillos 
llenos de flor de las espadanas 6 de algunos papeles rotos ; ataban estos con unos cordelejus 6 cin- 
tab de media vara de largo, de tal manera que pudiese hacer golpe ; otros hacian d manera de guan- 
tes las taleguillas 6 hinchabanlos de lo arriba dicho 6 de ojas de maiz verde ; ponian pena 6. todos 
estos que nadie echase piedra 6 cosa que pudiese lastimar dentro las talcguillos. Comenzaban 
luego los muchachos d jugar estc juego d manera de escaramuza y dabansede talcgazos en la cabe- 
za y por donde acertaban y de poco en poco se iban multiplicando de los muchachos y los mas 
traviesos daban de talegazos a las muchachos que pasaban por la callo ; d las veces, se juntaban ires 
6 quatro para dar d una de tal manera que la fatigaban y la hacian llorar. 

Algunos muehachas que eran mas discretas, si habian de ir il alguna parte, cntonces llevaban 
un palo (i otra cosa que hicicse temcr para defenderse. Algunos muchachos escondian la talega y 
quando pasaba alguna mujer dcscuidadamente, dabanla de talcgazos y quando la daban un golpe, 
(lecian Chichiquatzinto mantze, que quiere decir " Madro Nuestra, os la talega de cstc juego." Las 
mugeros andaban niiiy recatadas quando ivan it alguna parte.— (Sahagun, in Kingsborough, vol 7. 
p. K\.) 

At the feast of the goddess Tona the same game was played. — (See Sahagun, in Kingsborough, 
vol. 6. p. ;«.) 



URINE DANCES AND UR-ORGIES. 53 

The following is Torquemada's description : 

In the festival in honor of the goddess Yamatecuhtli, or ' ' principal old woman, ' ' in 
the seventeenth month of the Mexican calendar, all the people of the city made bags after 
the manner of purses, and stuffed them full of hay and straw and other things which 
would have no weight and do no harm, and, attaching them to a cord, carried them hid- 
den under their cloaks. With these bags they buflFeted all the women they met on the 
streets. — (Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, lib. 10, cap. 29.) 

He recognizes the similarity between this and the blind-man's-buff 
games of other countries.* 

A contributor to Asiatic Researches calls this powder of the Hull festi- 
val a '^ purple powder," and claims that the idea is to represent the return 
of spring, which the Romans called ^' purple." f 

In the report of one of the early American explorations to the Trans- 
Missouri region occurs the story that the Republican Pawnees, Nebraska, 
once (about 1780-'90) violated the laws of hospitality by seizing a calu- 
met-bearer of the Omahas who had entered their village, and, among 
other indignities, making him ^' drink urine mixed with bison gall." J 

Bison gall itself sprinkled upon raw liver, just warm from the carcass, 
was regarded as a delicacy. The expression " excrement eater " is applied 
by the Mandans and others on the Upper Missouri as a term of the 
vilest opprobrium, according to Surgeon Washington Matthews, § U. S. 
Army, whose remarks are based upon an unusually extended and intelli- 
gent experience. 

Doctor Garrett mentions '^ water of amber made by Paracelsus out of 
cow dung/' and gives the recipe for its distillation, as well as for that of 
its near relative, '^ water of dung," the formula for which begins with 
the words, "Take of any kind of dung you please." || 

It is not beyond the limit of probability that in these obsolete medica- 
ments flicker the dying flame of the idea still governing the Hindu 
woman craving the joys of maternity. 

PHALLIC SUPERSTITIONS IN FRANCE. 

And in like manner, as has already been shown of the sacred character 
attaching among the people of the far East to water, wine, or milk which 

* Hacia tocla la gente de el Pueblo unas talegas, d manera de bolsas, y henchianles de hcno y paja 
y otras cosas que no hacen golpe ni tienen peso y colgavanlas dc un cordel y traianlas escondidas 
debaio de las mantos que les Servian de capas. Con estos talegas daban de Talegagos d todas las 
mugeres que encontraban por las colles. 

tR. Patterson, in Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1805, vol. 8, p. 78. 

J Long's Expedition, Philadelphia, 182:3, vol. 1. p. 300. 

?Author of *' Ilidatsa," and other ethnological works of authority. 

II Garrett, Myths in Medicine, New York, 1884, pp. 148, 149. 



54 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

had been poured over the lingam, the women of France solaced them- 
selves with the hope that children would come to those who drank an 
infusion containing scrapings from the phalli, existing until the out- 
break of the French revolution, at Puy en Velay, in the church of Saint 
Foutin; in the shrine of Saint Guerlichon, near Bruges; in the shrine 
of GuignolleS; near Brest ; and in that of an ancient statue of Priapus, 
at Antwerp.* 

CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

The resemblance to the customs of the East Indies was, in places, 
even closer than as above indicated. 

Inman tells of sterile women who drank ''priapic wine," i. e., wine 
poured upon an upright conical stone representing the lingam, and then 
collected and allowed to turn sour. (Inman, "Ancient Faiths," &c., vol. 
1, p. 305, article '^Asher.") 

The same statement is to be found in Hargrave Jennings' work, 
"Phallicism," London, 1884, p. 256, but it seems to be repeated from 
Inman and Dulaure. Campbell reports that ' ' among the principal relics 
of the church at Embrun was the statue of Saint Foutin. The worship- 
ers of this idol poured libations of wine upon its extremity, which was 
reddened by the practice. This wine was caught in a jar and allowed 
to turn sour. It was then called 'holy vinegar,' and was used by the 
women as a lotion with which to anoint the yoni." ("Phallic Worship," 
Eobert Allen Campbell, St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 197.) 

MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF URINE. 

The fullest examination possible has been made of encyclopaedias and 
medical works to ascertain the effects upon the human system of urine 
swallowed or absorbed. The only discovery has been in the work of 

* See Dulaure's " Des Divinit6s Generatrices," Paris, 1825, pp. 271, 277, 278, 280. and 283. He says 
that this vestige of phallic worship was discernible in France "a une epoque tres-rapproch^e de 
la notre," and that women " raclaient une enorme branche phallique que prosentait la statue du 
saint; elles croyaient que la raclure enfusee dans un boisson, les rcndrait fccondes." 

But Davenport, who has probed deeply into the question of phallic worship, contends that such 
vestiges existed in some of the communities of France, Sicily, and Belgium, not only down to the 
Reformation, but even to the opening decades of the 19th century. (See Davenport "On the 
Powers of Reproduction." London (privately printed), 1869, pp. 10-20.) 

E. Payne Knight speaks of this same instance of survival at Iscrnia, in Sicily. It was known 
at that place as late as 1805. 

See, also, "The Masculine Cross and Ancient Sex Worship," Sha Rocco, New York, 1874, &c. 

Dnlaurc, however, admits that he knew of no example in antiquity of scraping the phallus and 
drinking an infusion of the powder. "L'usage do racier le phallus et d'avaler de cette raclure 
avec de I'eau, usage dont je no connais point d'exemple dans I'antiquit^." 

Dulaure, as above, p. 300. 



URINE DANCE 8 AND UE- ORGIES. 55 

Surgeon General Hammond, U. S. Army.* A chapter is devoted to 
uraemic intoxication or the exhilaration produced by the entrance into the 
blood of urine, either injected or abnormally absorbed. This part of the 
subject should be carefully scrutinized by medical experts, whose deter- 
minations may make known whether or not the drunken frenzy of the 
Zuni dancers could be attributed to the unnatural beverage exclusively 
or to that in combination with other intoxicants. 

Only such matter has been admitted into this monograph as could ^nma 
fade be considered as having the right of entry ; the greatest care has 
been taken to avoid distortion or mutilation of authorities, and much has 
been excluded that might have been presented without running a risk of 
being accused of unfairness. 

For example, as old an authority as John de Laet calls attention to 
the great prevalence of intoxication and debauchery among the Indians 
of Vextipa, near Mexico, who on feast days had the ancient custom of 
becoming drunk as beasts and committing enormous excesses.! And in 
like manner the first missionaries in Canada complained of the brutal 
orgies of the natives, in which, under cover of darkness and the cloak of 
their superstitions, deeds were committed which the pen dared not de- 
scribe. Ample reference to these has been preserved in the Jesuit rela- 
tions, and in the exact and interesting American treatises dependent so 
largely upon them. J It is more likely, however, that the Huron and 
Algonkin .saturnalia were, in general terms, scenes of promiscuous licen- 
tiousness. 

Only two authorities can be cited. Fathers Le Jeune and Sagard, who 
instance the use of human urine or ordure under spiritual direction ; all 
others leave the inference, that the bacchanalia of which they were the 
reluctant and disgusted observers had no other peculiarity than that of 
unrestrained sexual intercourse. 

To confirm the testimony previously submitted upon the phalhc origin 
of the custom of kissing under the mistletoe, the deductions of a recent 

* Physiological Memoirs, New York, 1863. 

Dunglison says : " Human urine was at one time considered aperient ; and was given in jaundice 
in the dose of one or two ounces. Cow's urine, urina vaccae. all-flower water, was once used warm 
from the cow as a purge." — (Dunglison's Medical Dictionary, Philadelphia, Pa., 1860, article 
"Urine.") 

t John de Laet, lib. vi, chap, vii, p. 202. 

+ See Francis Parkman's " Jesuits in North America," the works of John Gilmary Shea, and 
Kipp's "Jesuit Missions." 



56 URINE DANCES AND UR- ORGIES. 

writer merit attention, although they came too late for incorporation in 
their proper place : 

The mistletoe was dedicated to Mylitta, in whose worship every woman must once in 
her life submit to the sexual embrace of a stranger. When she concluded to perform 
this religious duty in honor of her acknowledged deity, she repaired to the temple and 
placed herself under the mistletoe, thus offering herself to the first stranger who solicited 
her favors. The modern modification of the ceremony is found in the practice among 
some people of hanging the mistletoe, at certain seasons of the year, in the parlor or 
over the door, when the woman entering that door, or found standing under the wreath, 
must kiss the first man who approaches her and solicits the privilege. — ("Phallic "Wor- 
ship," Robert Allen Campbell, C. E., St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 202.) 

Eeferring to previous remarks, on page 37, it may be noted that a 
curious instance of survival by contrariety is to be detected in what 
Picart relates of the Hebrew ceremonial of the present day. He says 
of the behavior of the Hebrew while praying, that he should carefulh 
avoid gaping, spitting, blowing his nose, or. emitting any exhalations: 

II doit 6viter autant qu'il se pent de bailler, de cracher, de se moucher, de laisser allei 
des vents. — (Picart, Coutumes et Ceremonies, &c., vol. 1, p. 126.) 

All this information seems to be taken from the work of the Kabbi 
Leon of Modena. 

In the above are seen the antipodes of the practices characteristic ol 
the worship of Baal-Peor which the prophets had so much trouble in 
eradicating from the minds of the chosen people. 



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